Mostly intact black box seen as key break in Air India plane crash investigation

Hindustan Times

10 hours ago

The black box recovered from the Air India flight 171 crash site in Ahmedabad shows minimal damage and the data it contains is likely to be extracted in India itself, officials said on Saturday, raising hopes for some early clues about what caused the Boeing 787 jet to crash just 33 seconds after take-off.
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The relatively intact condition of the flight data recorder represents a crucial break for investigators, who typically face lengthy delays in air crash probes when damaged black boxes must be sent to original equipment manufacturers for extracting the data . In this case, that would have been Boeing's HQ in the US. To be sure, the data may still have to be shared with Boeing and the manufacturer of the plane's engines, GE, for analysis.
A police officer said crash site analysis by National Security Guard teams using advanced scanners and sniffer dogs found no evidence of explosives at the BJ Medical College complex , where the plane crashed and exploded, killing 241 of the 242 on board besides several students of the college and residents of a nearby colony.
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'The black box will give a clear idea of the situation before the crash. It was found on Friday and it appears to not be much damaged. Hence it is more likely to be analysed by Indian investigating agency (Aircraft Accident Investigation Bureau- AAIB) at its headquarters in Delhi,' said an official close to the investigation, who asked not to be named.
In April, the civil aviation ministry inaugurated a new laboratory built in Delhi to correlate data from cockpit voice recorders, radar, and flight data recorders to enhance accuracy in air investigations.
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A second official aware of the matter added that a final decision was pending. 'The relevant authorities are weighing options. While the AAIB, in all likelihood will access the black box, the authorities are also discussing the need for inputs from Boeing or [engine-maker] GE on the crash data.'
Teams from the AAIB continued focusing on recovering the aircraft's tail section, which contains the second black box, officials said.
The Boeing 787 has two black boxes, one at each end of the aircraft, for redundancy. Each black box, which is in fact coloured bright orange, in a 787 contains what is known as the enhanced airborne data recorder (EADR) that includes the flight data recorder and the cockpit voice recorder.
The recovered black box contains not just voice recordings from the cockpit but data on every activity inside the aircraft, including which buttons pilots pressed, levers they activated and what settings instruments were put to, officials said.
A team from the U.S. National Transportation Safety Board is assisting the investigation, while Boeing officials from the US were expected to have arrived on Saturday.
The NSG inspection on Saturday morning using advanced scanners and K9 units from Delhi and Ahmedabad cleared security concerns about the crash. 'The NSG teams did not find any trace of explosives or IEDs across any debris of the Air India plane,' said a police officer who requested anonymity.
During the security sweep, however, NSG teams made a grim discovery—the body of a woman, possibly a crew member, trapped beneath the aircraft's tail section that had been lodged in the wall of the hostel mess of the medical college.
' Their scanners can detect objects hidden beneath opaque surfaces. It was during this search that the body was found,' the police officer said.
After receiving clearance from NSG and police, two large cranes were deployed on Saturday afternoon to remove the aircraft's tail section from the hostel mess wall—a delicate operation that took nearly four hours.
The tail, while removed from the building, remains at the crash site along with other aircraft components scattered across the cordoned hostel complex. Officials said all debris must be preserved as evidence until the investigation is complete.
'Instructions have been issued to agencies on the ground in Ahmedabad to preserve all parts of the aircraft wherever it is placed because it is the most crucial evidence,' said a senior civil aviation ministry official.
The wreckage will eventually be moved to a hangar at the airport or an airbase close to the city, one of the officials cited above said, adding that it is here that investigators will attempt to reconstruct the aircraft to understand the sequence of failures that led to the crash.
'At the hangar or the air base, wherever it is taken, the remaining part of the damaged aircraft will be put together to probe what led to the crash,' an official said, explaining that a decision on where to take debris is pending
Boeing officials are expected to visit the site and examine the wreckage before any major relocation occurs, the officials added.
The crash site remained under heavy security on Saturday with Gujarat police and Air India officials guarding aircraft components scattered across the medical college campus. The affected parts of the campus, spread roughly over a 200 metre radius, remains sealed to all except investigators.
'The plane missed hitting our colony by just about 100-200 metres,' said Sujata, a homemaker whose house is adjacent to the complex. 'Police said entry will be banned for a few more days, so this means the plane's parts will be kept there till that time,' said Sujata, whose rooftop has become the go-to spot for TV anchors and photographers attempting to get a visual of the site.