Investigators combing the wreckage of an Air France jetliner that crashed almost two years ago said Sunday they had located and retrieved the plane's data recorder from the depths of the Atlantic Ocean.

Since the Airbus A330 jetliner disappeared en route from Rio de Janeiro to Paris on June 1, 2009, killing all 228 people onboard, their families and industry officials have wanted to learn what caused the crash.

Air France flight 447 was flying through heavy thunderstorms and experienced some malfunctions with airspeed sensors, according to automated maintenance data that was transmitted by the plane soon before it went down. But the problems identified so far weren't sufficiently grave to cause a crash.

Now, investigators will attempt to extract data from the digital recorder that could shed light on what the pilots and the plane did in their final moments.

It remains unclear, however, whether the data files are intact after such a long time.