Officials Still Searching For Cause Of Plane Crash In The French Alps

The director of France's aviation investigative agency says audio has been recovered from the cockpit recorder salvaged from the crash of the Germanwings plane in the Alps.

But he says there still isn't the ``slightest explanation'' for what caused the plane to lose altitude and crash. He says the plane was flying ``until the end'' _ slamming into the mountain, not breaking up in the air.

He says the final communication from the plane was a routine message about permission to continue on its route.

Remi Jouty says the material recovered from the voice recorder includes sound and voices, and was extracted this afternoon from the mangled black box recovered from a mountainside.

Jouty says the investigation could take weeks or even months.

France's president says the case that contained the flight data recorder has been found, but not the recorder itself.