2ND RECORDER RECOVERED FROM ARMENIAN PLANE
Niagara Gazette, NY
May 24 2006
MOSCOW
Searchers on Wednesday recovered the second flight recorder from an
Armenian airliner that crashed into the Black Sea three weeks ago,
killing all 113 people aboard, local media reported.
The flight data recorder was lifted by a diving apparatus from a
depth of about 1,640 feet after it was separated from a thick layer
of silt, said Transport Ministry spokeswoman Svetlana Kryshtanovskaya,
according to the RIA-Novosti news agency.
The data recorder was discovered within 50 feet from where workers
on Monday found the plane’s cockpit voice recorder.
Russian television channels showed a yellow, remote-controlled
apparatus lifting the red recorder from the sea surface.
Investigators hope the two recorders will help answer why the Armavia
Airbus A-320 plane plunged into the sea May 3 in heavy rain and poor
visibility. The flight had been en route to the southern Russian sea
resort Sochi from the Armenian capital, Yerevan.
Prosecutors almost immediately dismissed the possibility that
terrorists had brought the plane down, and officials point to rough
weather or pilot error as the likely cause. Armavia officials have
suggested, however, that air traffic controllers were at least partly
to blame.
Top Armenian aviation officials will travel to Moscow Thursday for
deciphering the recorders, a process that could also take place in
Paris with the involvement of Airbus, said Gayane Davtian, a spokesman
for Armenia’s civil aviation authority.
Meanwhile, the victims’ relatives are to receive compensation of
$20,000 each, the insurance company liable for the payments said
Wednesday.
“The insurance payments will not depend in any way on the cause of
the catastrophe,” said Artak Antonian, head of the Grand insurance
company.