It plunged vertically, hitting the ocean belly-first. Life jackets had not been deployed:

"Brazil decided on June 27 to call off the recovery operation but France has maintained its nuclear submarine, research vessel and other boats in the area on a final hunt for the black boxes. The BEA lead investigator said the search would continue until July 10. The homing beacons on the flight recorders emit signals for about one month after the crash and the BEA hopes that they will have a longer-than-usual shelf life. Investigators have been scrutinizing some 640 pieces of debris recovered from the crash zone for any clue as to what brought down the plane as it flew through turbulence over the Alantic."

In related news, the sole survivor of the Airbus crash near Comoros, a 14-year-old girl, returned to Paris:

"Yemenia Flight 626 crashed Tuesday morning off Comoros amid heavy winds, and Bahia, described by her father as a fragile girl who could barely swim, spent over 13 hours in the water clinging to plane wreckage before she was rescued. The other 152 people on the plane, including her mother, are presumed dead. It is not clear that Bahia knows her mother is dead because her uncle who visited her Wednesday at a Comoros hospital was too heartbroken to break the news. Instead, he told Bahia that her mother was also recovering."

There are reports that Airbus may be forced to ground its entire fleet of long-range jets.