VOICE RECORDER RECOVERED FROM CRASHED PLANE
Irish News
May 24, 2006 Wednesday
Russian searchers have recovered the cockpit voice recorder from an
Armenian passenger jet that crashed in the Black Sea nearly three
weeks ago killing 113 passengers and crew.
Workers using a remote-controlled diving apparatus with a robotic arm
plucked the recorder from the sea floor nearly 1,640 feet beneath the
surface after removing a layer of silt up to two feet thick that had
hidden it from searchers.
The searchers said they hoped to also recover the flight data recorder
soon, which they believe is under silt nearby.
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 the Russian resort city of Sochi.
“I think that what happened will be revealed,” Tatyana Anodina,
head of the Interstate Aviation Committee, the civil agency that
links Russia with 11 other former Soviet republics, said.
Ms Anodina said the cockpit voice recorder was damaged by the crash
and may have suffered from the harsh conditions beneath the silt.
However, she said she was confident that it would yield information
“very important to investigators”, including voices and other sounds
in the cockpit during the final minutes of the doomed flight.
Ms Anodina said the Interstate Aviation Committee would work with
French investigators and Armenian representatives to retrieve the
data but was usnure when they might have results.
Prosecutors almost immediately dismissed the possibility that
terrorists brought down the plane and officials point to rough weather
or pilot error as the likely cause.
However, officials from the manufacturer Armavia have suggested that
air traffic controllers may be at least partly to blame.
Ms Anodina described the recovery operation as “one of the most
difficult” worldwide.
A device normally used for geological research was brought in last
week for the search but the operation was disrupted by bad weather
until Friday.
When the weather cleared the device first combed a 65ft by 65ft
patch of the sea floor amid the wreckage near the coast where French
specialists had detected signals from the recorders.
The search area was widened after the recorders were not found but
the voice recorder was finally located late on Sunday under silt
in the initial search area after searchers attached a radio-signal
detection device to the apparatus.