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Alliance Boeing crash FDR decoded

The flight data recorder of the ill-fated Alliance Air Boeing 737 crash at Patna has been decoded, more than a month after the accident. Air Marshal P Rajkumar, who is heading the inquiry into the cause of the crash, along with his assessors Captain N S Mehta and S A Deshmukh, had the FDR readout carried out at the Air India workshop on Friday, airport officials said in Bombay Sunday.

"An FDR readout has been prepared but the transcript of the cockpit voice recorder (CVR) is yet to be carried out," the officials said.

Total secrecy was maintained during the decoding spread over six hours, the officials added.

The 12 parameters in the FDR give among other things the height, speed, heading and power of the engine till the final moments of the crash.

The FDR along with the CVR (which records the conversation between the cockpit crew and air traffic control) together constitutes the 'black box', could provide a vital clue to the cause of the July 17 crash of the CD 7412 flight from Calcutta to Delhi via Patna and Lucknow.

The Boeing crashed into a row of houses shortly before it was to land at Patna leaving nearly 60 dead, including some on the ground.

Meanwhile, in the wake of the crash and some ground incidents, the civil aviation ministry had last week constituted a task force to check out the maintenance procedures and practices followed by Indian Airlines and Alliance Air, its subsidiary.

The task force, headed by Director General of Civil Aviation H S Khola and consisting of deputy director N Ramesh and Air India general manager (engineering) Babu Peter, is to suggest improvements, if any, and submit the report by September 15, officials said.

Two other task forces, headed by IA personnel, have been set up for looking at aircraft acquisition and inflight services.

The airline has already invited financial bids from Boeing Company and Airbus Industrie for replacing of the Boeing 737s and Airbus A300 aircraft.

Civil Aviation Minister Sharad Yadav had constituted four task forces to improve Air India's image and product in its totality after a high-level review of the national carrier last week.

PTI

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