Algeria Crash probe slowed by black boxes

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wpid-air-algerie-767-795x530.jpgInvestigators probing an Air Algerie plane crash in Mali, in which 116 people were killed, said on Thursday they had been unable to recover any information from one of the plane’s two black boxes.

The head of France’s air accident investigations bureau, which is assisting Mali in the investigation, said the recordings on the cockpit voice recorder were “unusable so far.”

While noises could be heard on the tape, they were “unintelligible,” BEA director Remi Jouty told a press conference in Paris, blaming a “dysfunction”, which he said was “not the result of the crash.”

The recordings of inflight conversations between crew members often contain vital clues as to what caused a crash.

In its absence the investigators will have to rely on information from the other black box, the flight data recorder, and the last conversations between the crew and ground staff to piece together the plane’s last moments.

Flight AH5017 disappeared from radar less than an hour after leaving Burkina Faso’s capital Ouagadougou for Algeria’s capital Algiers on July 24.

France had 54 citizens among the victims and Burkina Faso 23. The six-member crew were Spanish.

Using information from the flight data recorder the investigators reconstructed the trajectory of the McDonnell Douglas MD-83 aircraft, which crashed in stormy weather near Mali’s border with Burkina Faso.

At the start of the flight the plane deviated slightly from its route, in a manner consistent with a pilot trying to avoid storm clouds, Jouty said.

But after reaching cruise altitude it started to lose speed and then, after taking a left turn, began falling “very fast”, he said.

While refusing to speculate about the causes of the crash at this stage, Jouty said it was unlikely the plane had disintegrated in mid-flight.

The fact that the debris field was concentrated in a small area was further indication that the plane had broken up on impact, he said.

But he stressed: “I do not think we can exclude the thesis of deliberate action at this stage.”

N’Faly Cisse, president of Mali’s aviation accidents commission, told the press conference the BEA would submit a progress report in mid-September.

The plane crashed near a region where French forces have been fighting Islamist militants since January 2013.

The crew first asked to change route because of the weather, and then to turn back altogether, before contact with the plane was lost, according to French authorities.

Jouty said no suspicions items were found among the debris.

The air crash was the deadliest for France since Air France flight 447 crashed over the southern Atlantic in June 2009, killing 228 people, of whom 72 were French. That flight also ran into bad weather.
Source: GNA
PDC

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