11 hours ago
Black box of crashed Air India flight not sent abroad; it is with AAIB, says civil aviation minister
Pune: Union civil aviation minister Ram Mohan Naidu on Tuesday denied media reports that the black box of the Air India Boeing 787, which crashed in Ahmedabad on June 12, was sent abroad because the facility in India was not able to extract data from it.
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"The black box is in India, with the Aircraft Accident Investigation Bureau (AAIB), which is carrying out a detailed investigation into the whole incident. The news that it was sent abroad is false," Naidu said on the sidelines of a 'Helicopters and Small Aircraft Summit' in Pune.
Naidu said all aspects of the air crash are being looked into by AAIB. "We do not want to put pressure on it. There is no timeline on when the investigation will conclude as that decision has been left to AAIB.
This is a very technical matter. AAIB is our body, and it is keeping the black box."
Reports appeared in a section of media claimed that the black box, which is a flight data recorder, of the ill-fated aircraft suffered extensive damage in the crash and data extraction in India was not possible. They said that the National Safety Transport Board in Washington would instead do the job.
To those unaware, a state-of-the-art laboratory for the analysis of black boxes was inaugurated two months ago at the AAIB headquarters in New Delhi.
The facility costs Rs9 crore, and with the technical support of Hindustan Aeronautics Limited, it has been designed to recover flight data and conduct detailed crash investigations.
About the growing construction activities near the airports, including in Pune, Mumbai and Ahmedabad, the minister told TOI that everything was as per rules and regulations. "Through parliament, we brought in certain acts, and through these acts, certain subordinate legislations and rules were framed.
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It is the implementation part where we have to do much more."
Naidu further said civil aviation rules come from the International Civil Aviation Organisation, and "when you are part of that convention, you have to follow the rules."
The black box is an electronic recording device placed in the fuselage of an aircraft. There are two types of recording devices — flight data recorder and cockpit flight recorder. These two are painted bright orange so that they can be spotted and retrieved without delays after an accident.
With three back-to-back chopper crashes during the Char Dham Yatra resulting in six casualties in May and June, Naidu said that a separate directorate has been created and a new safety system will come into effect from Sept.
"For the first time, we have created a separate directorate for the increase and regulation of chopper movements in the country. There cannot be any compromise on safety. There are a lot of hilly areas at the Char Dham Yatra, which makes air traffic management challenging due to weak or no signals.
We are looking at innovative solutions so that we can have more air traffic control and better processing of weather data.
We are going to use the next two months to enhance the safety aspects, and by Sept, a new safety system will be in place," he said.
Swati Pandey, vice-chairman and managing director of Maharashtra Airport Development Company Limited, said that sites for eight proposed water aerodromes in the state had been identified and a proposal had been sent to the Airport Authorities of India. "These sites are Wai Dam in Satara, Pavananagar (Pavana Dam) in Pune, Gangapur Dam in Nashik, Khindsi Dam in Nagpur, Koradi Dam at Mehkar in Buldana, Pemch Dam at Parshivani in Nagpur, Ganpatipule in Ratnagiri, and Ratnagiri.
Also, state govt has planned 358 permanent helipads, one in each taluka," she said.
