Investigators have downloaded flight recorder data from an Air India crash this month that killed 271 people, India’s civil aviation ministry said yesterday, a long-awaited step towards understanding the world’s worst aviation disaster in a decade.
The London-bound Boeing 787 Dreamliner crashed moments after takeoff from India’s Ahmedabad city on June 12, killing 241 people on board and the rest on the ground.
The black boxes of the plane – the cockpit voice recorder (CVR) and flight data recorder (FDR) – were recovered in the days that followed, one from the rooftop of a building at the crash site on June 13, and the other from the debris on June 16.
The ministry said data from the front recorder was accessed on Wednesday by a team led by India’s Aircraft Accident Investigation Bureau (AAIB), with the US National Transportation Safety Board.
US National Transportation Safety Board chair Jennifer Homendy told Reuters said yesterday she hopes the Indian government will be able to share details from the investigation into the crash in short order.
“These efforts aim to reconstruct the sequence of events leading to the accident and identify contributing factors to enhance aviation safety and prevent future occurrences,” the ministry said in a statement.
Meanwhile, two senior sources told Reuters that India would not allow a UN investigator to join the probe. Some safety experts had criticised for delays in analysis of crucial black box data. Earlier this week, the UN aviation agency took the unusual step of offering India one of its investigators to provide assistance following the crash.
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