India crash team finds black boxes
Source: Agencies |
May 24, 2010, Monday
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INVESTIGATORS searching for clues to what caused India's worst air disaster in more than a decade yesterday recovered the cockpit voice recorder and flight data recorder from the charred remains of an Air India flight.
The crash on Saturday of the Boeing 737-800, which overshot a hilltop runway in southern India and plunged over a cliff, killed 158 people. Only eight survived, many of them by jumping from the wreckage just before it burst into flames.
Investigators used cutters to search for the black boxes in the twisted wreckage of the aircraft, which was scattered along the hillside just outside Mangalore's Bajpe airport.
A forensic team from the United States has arrived in India to help in the investigation, said Harpreet Singh, an Air India spokeswoman.
Air India, the country's national carrier, runs inexpensive flights under the Air India Express banner to Dubai and other Middle Eastern destinations where millions of Indians are employed.
May-June is the summer holiday season for the Indian expatriates to attend weddings and visit families back home.
Dozens of relatives arrived on Air India flights from Dubai and the southern Indian states of Karnataka and Kerala yesterday to take home the bodies of their loved ones.
Arvind Jadhav, Air India chairman and managing director, said 146 of the 158 bodies had been identified and were being handed over to relatives for funerals.
One of the victims was Mahendra Kulkarni, a telecommunications company director in the Emirates, who was flying back to India with his ailing mother-in-law after she had slipped into coma.
Mohammed Siddiqui, 27, had boarded the doomed flight in Dubai within hours of a phone call from his family in Kerala telling him his father had died.
An Air India spokesman said all eight survivors were still in hospital yesterday.
The crash on Saturday of the Boeing 737-800, which overshot a hilltop runway in southern India and plunged over a cliff, killed 158 people. Only eight survived, many of them by jumping from the wreckage just before it burst into flames.
Investigators used cutters to search for the black boxes in the twisted wreckage of the aircraft, which was scattered along the hillside just outside Mangalore's Bajpe airport.
A forensic team from the United States has arrived in India to help in the investigation, said Harpreet Singh, an Air India spokeswoman.
Air India, the country's national carrier, runs inexpensive flights under the Air India Express banner to Dubai and other Middle Eastern destinations where millions of Indians are employed.
May-June is the summer holiday season for the Indian expatriates to attend weddings and visit families back home.
Dozens of relatives arrived on Air India flights from Dubai and the southern Indian states of Karnataka and Kerala yesterday to take home the bodies of their loved ones.
Arvind Jadhav, Air India chairman and managing director, said 146 of the 158 bodies had been identified and were being handed over to relatives for funerals.
One of the victims was Mahendra Kulkarni, a telecommunications company director in the Emirates, who was flying back to India with his ailing mother-in-law after she had slipped into coma.
Mohammed Siddiqui, 27, had boarded the doomed flight in Dubai within hours of a phone call from his family in Kerala telling him his father had died.
An Air India spokesman said all eight survivors were still in hospital yesterday.
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