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Business News/ News / World/  Air Algerie crash investigators says jet disintegrated on impact
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Air Algerie crash investigators says jet disintegrated on impact

A dysfunctional cockpit voice recorder is slowing the probe as work continues to establish if stormy weather was to blame for the tragedy

A TV grab showing one of the two black boxes of Air Algerie flight AH5017 being carried by a Malian police officer. Photo: AFPPremium
A TV grab showing one of the two black boxes of Air Algerie flight AH5017 being carried by a Malian police officer. Photo: AFP

Paris/ Toulouse: The Air Algerie jetliner that crashed in Mali killing 116 people last month disintegrated when it hit the ground, though a deliberate act of sabotage can’t yet be ruled out, safety experts said on Thursday.

A dysfunctional cockpit voice recorder is slowing the probe as work continues to establish if stormy weather in the area on the fringes of the Sahara desert was to blame for the tragedy, the BEA (Bureau d’Enquetes et d’Analyses), France’s air-accident investigator, said on Thursday.

The analysis of so-called black-boxes from the McDonnell Douglas MD-83 plane will have to rely on the flight-data recorder in the absence of cockpit recordings, together with radio transmissions, weather reports and physical evidence. The civil aviation bureau in Mali, a former French colony, has turned to the BEA for assistance following the 24 July crash in which 110 passengers died, 50 of them French citizens.

While investigators haven’t ruled out foul play, the plane veered from its planned path as if to avoid storms known to be present and descended rapidly, falling 1,600 feet in its last second before shattering as it hit the ground. An initial report on findings will be published in mid-September.

“The impact was extremely violent," Remi Jouty, director of the BEA, said in a press briefing at Le Bourget outside Paris. The jet’s last recorded speed was 740 kilometres an hour (kmph), he said.

Maintenance question

Investigators will also examine why the cockpit voice-recorder failed and what kind of maintenance was performed on the black boxes before the flight. The data recorder should still provide information across dozens of parameters including the plane’s position and altitude, engine performance, flap settings and how the autopilot was set up.

Shortly after the accident, French foreign minister Laurent Fabius told journalists that the pilots had sought permission to turn back to Burkina Faso, where the service bound for Algeria had originated, because of bad weather. Jouty said that he couldn’t immediately confirm that, since conversations with the ground hadn’t been fully studied.

N’Faly Cisse, president of the accident investigation commission of the Mali civil aviation bureau, said future comment will come from his office, which is leading the probe.

Flight AH5017’s loss capped a week of aviation disasters that began with the downing of a Malaysian Air Boeing Co. 777 over eastern Ukraine following a suspected missile strike, killing 298 people, and included the loss of an ATR-72 turboprop in poor weather in Taiwan, which left 48 dead. Bloomberg

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Published: 07 Aug 2014, 08:02 PM IST
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