Air India: India begins downloading data from recorders of crashed Dreamliner
The particular aircraft model carries the two recorder sets to aid in thorough analysis. These combined units record flight data and cockpit audio. Data recorders track with high precision the position of gear and flap levers, thrust settings, engine performance, fuel flow and even fire handle activation.The data can be used to reconstruct the flight's final moments and determine the cause of the incident.The cockpit voice recorder (CVR) captures pilot radio calls, individual mic audio, and ambient cockpit sounds via an area microphone.The aviation ministry said data from the recorder was accessed on Wednesday by a team led by India's Aircraft Accident Investigation Bureau (AAIB), with the US National Transportation Safety Board (NTSB)."The analysis of CVR and FDR [flight data recorder] data is underway. These efforts aim to reconstruct the sequence of events leading to the accident and identify contributing factors to enhance aviation safety and prevent future occurrences," the ministry said in a statement.Meanwhile, US National Transportation Safety Board chair Jennifer Homendy told Reuters news agency that she hopes the Indian government will be able to share details from the investigation into the crash in short order."For aviation safety and for public safety and public awareness we hope that they will make their findings public swiftly," Homendy said on the sidelines of an aviation event.She said the NTSB team has been working diligently to provide assistance to India and "we have had excellent cooperation from the Indian government and the AAIB."India's decision to download and investigate data from the flight recorders comes nearly two weeks after the crash and has raised questions among aviation experts, some of whom described the delay as unusual.Air India Flight 171 was airborne for less than 40 seconds before it crashed into a crowded Ahmedabad neighbourhood, killing all but one of the 242 passengers on board, in one of India's most puzzling air disasters in recent memory.The London-bound Boeing 787, piloted by Captain Sumeet Sabharwal and co-pilot Clive Kundar, took off at 13:39 local time, but issued a mayday call moments later - its final transmission.
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When a Liberian-flagged container ship, the MSC Elsa 3, capsized and sank 13 miles off the coast of Kerala, in India, on 25 May, a state-wide disaster was quickly declared. A long oil slick from the 184-metre vessel, which was carrying hazardous cargo, was partially tackled by aircraft-borne dispersants, while a salvage operation sealed tanks to prevent leaks. But almost three months later, a more insidious and persistent environmental catastrophe is continuing along the ecologically fragile coast of the Arabian Sea. Among the 643 containers onboard were 71,500 sacks of tiny plastic pellets known as nurdles. By July, only 7,920 were reportedly recovered. Millions of these plastic balls have continued to wash ashore with the fierce monsoon storm surges that demolished a stretch of palm-fringed beach in Thiruvananthapuram, Kerala's capital, in June. 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Buoyant, the size of a lentil and almost impossible to recover: how nurdles are polluting the oceans
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They lie scattered by the sea-facing Catholic church at Vettukadu and in tide lines on the beach, where giant jute bags of them, gathered by volunteers, await collection. Lightweight, buoyant and almost impossible to recover, they will circulate in moving sand and ocean currents for years, experts say. 'The nurdles haven't just polluted the sea – they've disrupted our entire way of life,' says Ajith Shanghumukham, a fish worker in the town. A fishing ban, imposed after the spill by local authorities in four Kerala districts, has since been lifted but fears over contamination have hit fishing communities already struggling with declining fish populations and the changing climate's intensifying storms. 'Very few people now venture out to sea because the local markets simply aren't buying fish,' says Shanghumukham. Those who do report nets full of nurdles and declining catches. 'People continue to worry about contamination,' Shanghumukham says. 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Worryingly, following the Keralan spill, there have been reports of nurdles once again washing up on beaches in Sri Lanka, a reminder of the worst recorded plastic pollution spill in history when the X-Press Pearl container ship, carrying chemicals, caught fire and released 1,680 tonnes of nurdles into the sea off Colombo in 2021. The Kerala disaster, the latest in a series of pellet spills, has again exposed huge gaps in accountability, transparency and regulation in the plastics supply chain, environmentalists say. Dharmesh Shah, a Kerala-based plastics campaigner at the Centre for International Environmental Law, says: 'These spills expose the transboundary nature of pellet pollution, affecting countries regardless of their role in plastic production. 'They reveal a chronic lack of enforceable global standards across the supply chain – from production to transport – coupled with inadequate transparency, reporting and accountability.' 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At least 445,000 tonnes of nurdles are estimated to enter the environment annually worldwide; about 59% are terrestrial spills, with the rest at sea. The number of big nurdle spills at sea is increasing, according to Fidra, a Scottish environmental charity. With plastic production expected to triple to more than 1bn tonnes a year by 2060, along with more frequent and intense storms, the threat is expected to grow, with some 2tn nurdles spilling into the environment a year. Yet no international agreements exist on how to package and transport nurdles safely, or even to classify them as hazardous. This week, delegates from more than 170 countries are meeting at the UN's plastic pollution talks in Geneva, in an effort to resolve deep divisions over whether plastic production will be included in a final treaty. Campaigners hope successful talks will allow a global approach to pellet loss, packaging, transportation and legal accountability. Amy Youngman, a lawyer at the Environmental Investigation Agency, says: 'Because of the biodiversity in the area, the Kerala spill is devastating. But coming four years after the X-Pearl Xpress, it was foreseeable.' One problem, she says, is that ships are not required to disclose they are carrying pellets. Another is the failure to recognise harm when spilled. 'They are not seen as hazardous or dangerous material so they are shipped like any other produce,' she says. Human error causes most spills, she says, adding that laws on handling and storing pellets could reduce spills by 95%. A research paper published in June co-authored by Therese Karlsson, a scientific adviser for the International Pollutants Elimination Network, showed that plankton may well have been malformed after exposure to leached chemicals from plastic and burnt plastic debris from the X-Pearl Express. Of 16,000 chemicals in plastic, 4,000 are known to be hazardous. 'But for more than 10,000 of them we don't know the health impacts,' she says.
