Didier Nourrisson said today the black boxes would be transferred from northern Mali to the capital, Bamako, and then delivered to Paris by French gendarmes.
The plane took off from Ouagadougou, Burkina Faso, and was heading to Algiers, Algeria when it crashed early Thursday in northern Mali near the border with Burkina Faso.
French authorities say extreme bad weather was the likely cause but aren't ruling out other possibilities, including terrorism.
French President Francois Hollande said yesterday that data from the black boxes must be analysed as quickly as possible.