A-320 CRASH SEARCH OPERATION FINAL STAGE PREPARATION UNDERWAY

ITAR-TASS, Russia
May 15 2006

SOCHI, May 15 (Itar-Tass) – Preparations for the final stage of
the search operation in the zone of the catastrophe of the Armenian
airliner A-320 are underway in Sochi, the response headquarters for
the technical support of the operation told Itar-Tass.

“The final stage is a complex of work to lift two flight recorders
of the A-320 airliner of the Armenian company Armavia. Two deep-sea
automatic devices – Tiger and TR-1000 have been brought to Sochi for
this purpose,” a source in the headquarters told Itar-Tass. According
to the source, “If the weather and equipment do not fail us then it
will be possible to start the operation to lift the black boxes from
the sea bottom on Tuesday morning.”