AIRBUS BLACK BOX RECOVERED

The Moscow Times, Russia
May 23 2006

Searchers on Monday recovered the cockpit voice recorder from an
Armenian passenger jet that crashed in the Black Sea nearly three
weeks ago, killing all 113 people aboard, Transportation Minister
Igor Levitin said.

Workers using a remote-controlled diving apparatus with a robotic
arm plucked the recorder from the sea floor nearly 500 meters beneath
the surface after removing a layer of silt up to half a meter thick
that had covered the black box and hidden it from searchers for days,
he said.

Levitin said at a news conference that authorities hope to soon
recover the flight data recorder, which they believe is under silt
just three to five meters away.

Officials hope the recorders will help determine the cause of the
May 3 crash of the Armavia Airbus A-320, which plunged into the sea
in heavy rain and poor visibility as it approached the airport on a
flight from the Armenian capital, Yerevan, to Sochi.

“I think that what happened would be revealed,” said Tatyana Anodina,
head of the Interstate Aviation Committee, the civil agency that
links Russia with 11 other former Soviet republics.

Anodina said the cockpit voice recorder was damaged by the crash and
may have suffered from the harsh conditions beneath the silt, but
expressed confidence that it would yield information “very important
to investigators” — a recording of the voices and other sounds in
the cockpit in the final minutes of the doomed flight.