Black boxes probed for key to crash
Black boxes probed for key to crash
NEW DELHI (Agencies): Indian investigators yesterday prepared to decipher crucial information from two aircraft black boxes believed to hold the key to the worst mid-air collision in aviation history.
Civil Aviation Minister C.M. Ibrahim revealed both digital flight data recorders, called black boxes, were recovered from the wreckage of a Saudia Boeing 747 and a Kazhak aircraft which collided near New Delhi late on Tuesday, killing around 350 people.
The cockpit voice recorder from one of the aircraft was also found.
Ibrahim said Indian Air Force experts would be drafted in to examine the flight recorder data to try to discover what happened seconds before the impact.
Civil aviation secretary Yogesh Chandra said the pilots had had no idea of the danger before the collision.
He said no emergency procedures had been undertaken, saying: "At no point in time were either of the two pilots aware of the impending collision.
"It was not a head-on collision. Maybe the wings touched. "The windscreen of the Kazakh plane is intact and so is the fuselage. Most of the bodies on that plane were intact, suggesting the impact was not head on.
"The bodies on the Saudi plane were all charred because the aircraft was fully loaded with fuel."
Rescue workers, battling flames and other hazards, recovered 275 bodies by late Tuesday, the United News of India reported.
They worked in darkness on a moonless night, using hurricane lanterns and torches to light the fields where the flaming debris of the airliners plunged to earth.
Tractors were used to haul away scores of bodies. The stench of burnt human flesh, mingled with the smell of burning rubber, chemicals and plastic, was heavy over the site, where the silhouette of one airplane with its roof sliced off, was faintly visible.
"We have seen nothing like this before," one of the rescue workers, with a white handkerchief shrouding his face, told Reuters. "It is bizarre and sickening."
A police official said it was thought there were three or four survivors "but they died on the way to hospital in Charkhi Dadri".
Villagers crowded around the crash site and more than 300 police cordoned off the area where the impact of the debris ploughed craters up 10 feet (three meters) deep.
A U.S. Air Force pilot flying nearby reported seeing two fireballs plunge to earth from an altitude of about 15,000 ft (4,570 meters).
The causes behind Tuesday's disaster remain a mystery, although speculation has focussed on a possible mix-up between the pilot of the Kazakh aircraft and air traffic controllers over the altitude of the plane's approach to New Delhi airport.
Indian Prime Minister H.D. Deve Gowda, meanwhile, visited the main crash site Wednesday as army reinforcements and helicopters joined the recovery effort.
Dismembered bodies were still being ferried on tractors and carts from the wreckage outside the village of Kheri Sanwal as darkness fell, the operation watched by grieving relatives and thousands of onlookers.
The small hospital in nearby Charki Dadri was converted into a makeshift morgue as the bodies were brought in.
Emergency staff wore masks because of the stench and huge crates of ice were delivered to preserve the corpses.
Dr. R.K. Bansal said around 60 percent of the bodies were identifiable. "Most of them are Indian males. There were not more than half a dozen children recovered," he said.
Police and commandos cordoned off the area, still heavy with the acrid smell of burned rubber and metal.
The Saudia airlines jumbo jet, carrying 312 people to Saudi Arabia, collided seven minutes after take-off with the incoming Kazakh Airlines Ilyushin-76 on a charter flight from Chimkent in southern Kazakhstan.
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