The French Bureau of Enquiry and Analysis (BEA) for Civil Aviation Safety has abandoned its search for the flight data and cockpit voice recorders from the Air France passenger jet that crashed in the Atlantic Ocean while enroute from Rio de Janeiro to Paris on June 1, 2009, killing all 228 people on board.

Experts will gather in the coming weeks to determine how to proceed in the Air France Flight 447 accident investigation being led by the BEA.

An initial search phase to find the black boxes ended on July 10, when the batteries powering their locator signals were thought to have run out. A second phase to locate the black boxes and the wreckage began at the end of July, with submarines sweeping the crash site with sonar.

"As the searches did not make it possible to locate the airplane wreckage, the BEA will gather an international team of investigators and experts in the coming weeks to exploit the data gathered with a view to launching a third search phase, and to determine the requirements and means to undertake this," the agency said in a statement.

Divers and submarines explored an area within a 47 miles radius around where the last message was received from the downed Airbus A330-200. During the first phase of the search, rescuers recovered 50 bodies and more than 600 pieces of the plane scattered on the sea.

BEA will gather a team of about 10 specialists from several countries including Brazil, France, the United States and Germany, to study the data gathered from the second phase and decide what a third search phase would cost and require. A BEA spokeswoman gave no estimate on when an eventual third mission might begin. The probe "is far from finished," she said. "We must find" the black boxes.