ITAR-TASS News Agency
TASS
May 12, 2006 Friday 11:30 AM EST

Krasnodar governor hopes for retrieval of A-320 flight recorders

KISLOVODSK

Krasnodar Governor Alexander Tkachyov hopes that flight recorders of
the A-320 jet of the Armenian airline Armavia, which crashed near
Sochi on May 3 and killed 113 people onboard, will be eventually
retrieved from the sea.

“Certainly, it is problematic to lift [the flight recorders] from
the depth of 600 meters, but we hope that will be done,” he said in
reply to an Itar-Tass question.

The Navigator vessel went to the flight recorders’ search zone for
telemetric analysis on Friday, a source at the Sochi seaport told
Itar-Tass.

“The visibility is normal on the A-320 crash scene, and we hope to
receive a telemetric picture of the seabed, where the flight
recorders are situated,” head of the Transport Ministry’s Federal
Sea and River Transport Agency Alexander Davydenko told Itar-Tass.

According to the operation headquarters, the flight recorders are
located at the distance of five meters from one another, and the
depth of 496 meters. “We are making the research to prevent any
mistakes in the choice of a deep-water apparatus that can raise the
two flight recorders from the seabed,” a source at the operation
headquarters said.