Respected French daily newspaper La Monde is reporting that French ships in the Atlantic have pinpointed the location of the black boxes data recorders from doomed Air France AF447.

According to the report, weak signals emitted by the beacons of the two recorders were detected by French ships Monday and the French mini-submarine Nautile was diving to try and recover them.

The black boxes - a cockpit voice recorder and a flight data recorder - are considered essential to the success of the investigation into the crash of the Airbus A330-200 aircraft, which killed 228 people.

The search to recover them has turned into a race against time, since the signals are emitted for only 30 days, or until the end of June.

The search for the airplane is made difficult by the mountainous terrain on the seafloor and depths of up to 4,800 meters.

Air France AF447 departed Rio de Janiero at 7pm (BRT) and was due to arrive at Paris’ Charles de Gaulle 2 airport at 11.15am local Paris time (0915 GMT).

Air traffic controllers lost contact with flight AF447 three hours into the flight when the aircraft was some 1,500 miles (2,400km) northeast of Rio.

The flight was carrying 126 men, 82 women, 7 children and one baby.

According to reports on France 24 the aircraft had reported electrical failure and strong turbulence before contact was lost.