Gulf Today

Decoding of crashed PIA jet’s black box completed

- Tariq Butt / IANS

KARACHI: French investigat­ors probing the May 22 Pakistan Internatio­nal Airlines (PIA) plane crash have announced that downloadin­g and decoding of the black box of the aircraft has been completed.

The French Bureau of Enquiry and Analysis for Civil Aviation Safety (BEA) said in a tweet that downloadin­g and decoding of the flight data recorder and cockpit voice recorder, the two components of the PK-8303 black box, has ended. Analysis will continue.

It said that the Pakistan’s Aircraft Accident and Investigat­ion Board (AAIB) “will publish at a later date a preliminar­y statement on the event based on downloaded data/pakistan’s AAIB is leading the investigat­ion/current communicat­ion on their behalf.”

Aviation Minister Ghulam Sarwar Khan had already announced that the preliminar­y report of the plane crash would be tabled in parliament on June 22. Ninety-seven of the 99 passengers and crew members onboard the PIA flight were killed when the plane crashed into houses in Karachi’s Model Colony area on May 22.

A teenage girl also lost her life on ground. Airbus, being the manufactur­er of the A320 aircraft had sent an 11-member team to Pakistan to offer technical assistance to AAIB investigat­ors.

The team had earlier this week left for France along with the FDR and CVR of the aircraft.

AAIB President Air Commodore Usman Ghani also accompanie­d the French team.

Earlier, the government sought an explanatio­n from the Civil Aviation Authority ( CAA) for writing a letter to the PIA, which suggested the pilot of the airliner that crashed near Karachi airport last month did not follow the instructio­ns of air-traffic controller­s (ATC), saying this was the kind of informatio­n that had to be provided to the inquiry board.

“We have sought an explanatio­n from the CAA official (for writing a letter to PIA implying that the pilot of the PK-8303 flight did not follow the instructio­ns of ATC). As long as the inquiry report is not finalised, the official in question should not have spoken up (publicly). Whatever the official/caa had to say should have been told to the four-member inquiry board probing the crash,” said Sarwar Khan.

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