AAIB will decide location for decoding black boxes of Air India Boeing 787: Govt
The civil aviation ministry has stated that the location of the decoding of data will be decided by the Aircraft Accident Investigation Bureau after assessment.
The civil aviation ministry said in a statement on Thursday that a multidisciplinary team of the Aircraft Accident Investigation Bureau (AAIB), which is probing the crash of Air India’s Boeing 787 Dreamliner in Ahmedabad, has completed the key recovery work, including site documentation and evidence collection, and further analysis is now underway.
The ministry also countered reports that the black box was being sent to the US for the extraction of data.
“The decision regarding the location for decoding the flight recorders will be taken by the AAIB after due assessment of all technical, safety, and security considerations,” the statement said.
The government confirmed that a combined unit of the Digital Flight Data Recorder (DFDR) and Cockpit Voice Recorder (CVR) was recovered from the crash site on 13 June while another set was found on 16 June, the statement 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 earlier.
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The London-bound flight carrying 242 passengers and crew crashed in Ahmedabad moments after take-off. The plane carried 169 Indians, 53 British, seven Portuguese, and one Canadian passenger, along with 12 crew members. Only one person — a British national Viswash Kumar Ramesh — survived. At least 30 who were in the buildings at the crash site also died.
The ministry statement underlined that the government was committed to full transparency relating to the ongoing investigation and would follow all mandated protocols and norms in the larger interest of highest standards of passenger safety and convenience.
