Lake Erie's icy waters, wicked winds hamper plane's recovery

[...] two weeks after the crash, crews are concentrating on four spots within a football field sized-section near Cleveland's lakefront where divers already have found the business jet's cockpit voice recorder, seats, part of the fuselage and the remains of one passenger.

The slow-going search — hampered by ice, high winds and murky waters that limit visibility along the lake bottom — shows just how difficult it is to find the wreckage of a plane in water or a remote area despite the use of emergency beacons and high-tech equipment.

With no exact location to guide them, search planes and boats covered 128 square miles before the Coast Guard determined the next day that it was a recovery mission.

The initial search in Lake Erie included boats equipped with sonar that track underwater images, and signals thought to be from the plane's emergency beacon helped narrow the area to 12 square miles.

The cockpit voice recorder and a seat with human remains were pulled from the water the next day — eight days after the plane disappeared.

Recovery crews have been contending with an ice-covered surface and freezing conditions that limit divers to two hours in the water at a time.