RIA Novosti, Russia
May 13 2006
Wrecked plane recorders retrieval to start May 16 – minister
16:37 | 13/ 05/ 2006
MOSCOW, May 13 (RIA Novosti) – The recovery of flight recorders from
the Armenian Airbus airliner that crashed off Russia’s Black Sea
coast last week, killing all 113 people on board, will start May 16,
Russia’s transport minister said Saturday.
Igor Levitin said special equipment, which is currently in the port
of Novorossiisk, would be delivered to the scene shortly. It will be
prepared for the operation in Sochi, the resort city not far from the
scene, Monday, he said.
The effort to recover the objects, believed to be the black boxes
that are crucial for explaining the cause of the crash, may take two
or three days, the minister said.
“It depends on weather conditions,” he said.
Levitin said the recorders could be at a depth of 496 meters (1,627
feet), and visibility was good enough for the recovery effort. The
distance between the recorders was reported at about five meters (16
feet).
An emergency official said earlier in the day that searchers had
received images of objects believed to be parts of the crashed
airliner from a new Kalmar deep-sea search vehicle working at the
scene to locate pieces of the wreckage and the flight recorders.
“The objects are presumably parts of the airliner. They have been
found with the same coordinates as the radio signals believed to be
coming from the flight recorders,” he said.
The Airbus, owned by Armenia’s Armavia airline, crashed in stormy
weather near Sochi on May 3.