‘Black box’ found three days after Mangalore crash

Investigators have found the ‘black box’ or the Flight Data Recorder of the stricken Air India Express flight IX 812 that crashed here on Saturday. A search team from the Directorate General of Civil Aviation found the device — actually orange in colour — at around 10 a.m. on Tuesday, said Deputy Superintendent of Police S. Girish whose men have been guarding the area.

Mr. Girish said the lid of the one-foot long device was missing and its contents, which included a prominent cylindrical object, were badly charred.

The Deputy Commissioner of Dakshina Kannada district in-charge S.A. Prabhakar Sharma told The Hindu that the district administration has received confirmation from the DGCA about the discovery of the flight data recording unit.

The cylindrical object mentioned by Mr. Girish is the 'Crash Survivable Memory Unit' (CSMU) and as the name suggests, it is the most important component of the unit which also has an inbuilt power supply system.

According to investigators, despite being charred on the surface, the CSMU’s data is unlikely to be affected. The outer layer or housing of this robust unit is usually made of steel armour. Inside the armour is a layer of insulation and within this a thick “thermal block”. The memory board, which stores all the flight data, is at the core of this unit.

Crash report indicts AP aviation

The Central Bureau of Investigation will probe the alleged negligence of maintenance personnel who checked the Bell 430 helicopter which carried the former chief minister, Dr Y.S. Rajasekhar Reddy, to his death last September.

CBI officials said that this was being done in the wake of the Director General of Civil Aviation probe into the crash confirming the “casual attitude” of the maintenance personnel.

Sleuths will be questioning maintenance engineers and as well as the officials of AP Aviation Corporation Limited.

The CBI DIG, Mr V.V. Lakshminarayan, informed that the agency had already sent its team to New Delhi to collect the cockpit voice recorder data from the DGCA.

The DGCA report also blamed AP Aviation Corporation Limited alleging that it did not perform the quality assurance as per the laid down practices and directives.

“The helicopter was probably not airworthy when it was released for flight on September 2, 2009, even though it was not a contributory factor to the accident,” said the probe report.

Further, CBI sleuths will also examine how the transmission oil pressure was lost, though no snag was detected during inspection.

The DGCA probe also found that the logbook did not mention the reasons for the removal and repair of an engine from the No. 2 position and its installation on the number 1 position. The committee noted that one of the engines of the copter had become inoperative briefly during an earlier flight.

The aircraft maintenance engineer and flight crew also ignored the advisory on excess of torque before operation of the flight on September 2, 2009, the report stated.