Silkair flight recorder said to frustrate probe

Silkair flight recorder said to frustrate probe

WASHINGTON (Reuters): Investigators probing the SilkAir crash in Indonesia last month have been frustrated by difficulties reading the flight data recorder, Aviation Week reported on Monday.

U.S. and Indonesian investigators working in Washington discovered they were unable to retrieve any data for the last moments of the flight, the magazine said in its latest issue.

SilkAir flight MI-185 crashed on Dec. 19 in southern Sumatra on its way from Jakarta to Singapore. All 104 people on board the Boeing 737-300 were killed.

Aviation Week said investigators were now working with the maker of the data recorder and other experts to see if there was a way of restoring the tape.

A flight data recorder in good condition can be read out quickly, as shown by the recent 24-hour analysis of a recorder from a United Airlines jumbo jet that hit severe turbulence last month, killing one person.

The National Transportation Safety Board has had the flight data recorder almost two weeks. An NTSB spokesman declined to comment except to say work on both the data recorder and the cockpit voice recorder continued.

The Federal Aviation Administration said on Monday that the 68 U.S.-registered 737's it had ordered inspected for a possible tail problem had passed those checks.

The FAA ordered the review of bolts and screws on horizontal stabilizers after indications that 26 of these fasteners may have been missing from the accident plane before it crashed.

Affected worldwide were 211 Boeing 737-300, 400 and 500 series aircraft delivered after Sept. 20, 1995.

Aircraft under construction in Boeing plants have also passed the inspection but attention would still seem to be focused on the tail of the SilkAir plane.

The Straits Times newspaper of Singapore reported over the weekend that six pieces of tail wreckage had been found nearly 4.4 miles (seven km) away from the main wreckage area in the Musi river. These pieces included the horizontal stabilizers.

Neither the FAA, NTSB or Boeing Co. would comment on the report.

The SilkAir crash has attracted extra attention because it occurred while the plane was at cruising altitude -- statistically the safest portion of a flight.

The plane was only 10 months old and crewed by experienced pilots who sent no distress call.

Aviation Week cast doubt on previous reports that the plane was in clear weather, however. It said a Qantas Boeing 747 flying a little higher and about five minutes behind the SilkAir plane had to make a deviation around a severe thunderstorm at the crash location.

SilkAir is a regional unit of Singapore Airlines.