The Aircraft Accident Investigation Bureau (AAIB) will take a call on where the black boxes of the doomed Air India Boeing 787 will be decoded after assessing all technical, safety, and security considerations, the Ministry of Civil Aviation (MoCA) said Thursday, indicating that no decision has been taken yet on whether the data recorder will be analysed in India or will be sent abroad. The ministry’s remarks came amid reports and speculation that the black box—flight data recorder and cockpit voice recorder—may be sent to the US as AAIB’s black box lab might not be fully equipped to handle damaged units.
“It has been reported in certain media outlets that the CVR/DFDR (cockpit voice recorder/digital flight data recorder) from the ill-fated AI171 flight is being sent abroad for retrieval and analysis. The decision regarding the location for decoding the flight recorders will be taken by the AAIB after due assessment of all technical, safety, and security considerations. The Ministry of Civil Aviation urges all stakeholders to refrain from speculation on such sensitive matters and to allow the investigative process to proceed with the seriousness and professionalism it warrants,” MoCA said in a release.
“The AAIB investigation is progressing steadily with all necessary support from local authorities and agencies. Key recovery work, including site documentation and evidence collection, has been completed, and further analysis is now underway,” MoCA said, giving an update on the probe.
Boeing 787 aircraft have two combined black box sets, each with the joint functions of CVR and DFDR. According to industry insiders, the combined black box is called an Enhanced Airborne Flight Recorder (EAFR), and regulations require two units to be located in the aircraft—one at the front and one at the aft, or rear section—for redundancy, in case of unit is significantly damaged or is never recovered. The first EAFR were recovered on June 13 from the crash site in Ahmedabad, just a day after the crash, while the second was recovered on June 16. The government has so far not commented on the extent of damage the black boxes suffered in the crash.
The purpose of the DFDR is to record flight data on numerous parameters of aircraft operations, while the CVR records the flight crew’s voices, as well as other sounds inside the cockpit, including engine noise, stall warnings, landing gear extension and retraction, and other clicks and pops. Communications with air traffic control, automated radio weather briefings, and conversation between the pilots and ground or cabin crew are also recorded.
Sources indicated that deliberations are underway on whether to send units to the National Transportation Safety Board (NTSB) Vehicle Recorder Laboratory in the US for data extraction and analysis, or perform the exercise at the AAIB’s new black box lab in Delhi, but a decision is yet to be taken. The NTSB is already assisting the AAIB in the probe as the aircraft was manufactured in the US by an American company—Boeing.
“It will depend on the condition. The investigators will have to ascertain the absolute integrity of the black boxes, and if they are confident about it, they would like to analyse them at the new lab instead of sending it to an overseas facility,” a source had earlier told The Indian Express.
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“The new (AAIB) lab is a world-class facility but there are highly specialised labs in a few countries that may be superior. If the investigators feel that the DFDR or the CVR are not in a state that the AAIB lab can handle, or if the extent of data analysis that they require for the probe is beyond its capability, then they might decide to send it to an even more advanced facility, most likely in the US as the aircraft involved was a Boeing plane,” said another source, adding that if the units are sent abroad an AAIB team will accompany them to ensure their “safety, security, and integrity”.
The new and advanced AAIB lab, built by support of government-owned Hindustan Aeronautics Ltd (HAL) and inaugurated in April, has enhanced the agency’s ability to repair damaged black boxes, retrieve data, and conduct thorough analyses of accidents with high accuracy. Earlier, a black box lab under the aviation safety regulator Directorate General of Civil Aviation (DGCA) was being used by the AAIB, but the facility was old and lacked the a few key capabilities needed for thorough and accurate data retrieval and analysis, said a source. That was one of the reasons why a number of black boxes from aircraft involved in serious accidents were sent to overseas labs, said a source.
Last Thursday’s crash claimed the lives of 241 of 242 people on board the plane that was operating Air India flight AI-171 from Ahmedabad to London Gatwick. Lives were also lost on the ground as the plane crashed into a medical college hostel close to the Ahmedabad airport. This is the first wide-body crash for an Indian airline in four decades. It is also the first crash of a Boeing 787 globally. Both the black boxes are expected to play a critical role in the air crash investigation.
