Indian authorities said they had found the flight data recorder of the Air India plane that crashed, killing hundreds of people, as teams at the site continued to sift through wreckage on Saturday.
Data extracted from an aircraft’s so-called black boxes is crucial in investigations of aviation accidents, and the flight data recorder can give insight into such details as timing, altitude and airspeed.
“This marks an important step forward,” said India’s civil aviation minister, Ram Mohan Naidu Kinjarapu. “This will significantly aid the inquiry.”
The aviation ministry, in a statement late Friday, said the government had formed a high-level investigative committee, which would focus on “preventing and handling such occurrences in the future.”
Flight AI171, bound for London’s Gatwick Airport, crashed moments after takeoff from Ahmedabad, in India’s western state of Gujarat. There was only one survivor from the 242 onboard, and dozens of people on the ground also were killed.
In a sign of the alarm caused by the crash, India’s aviation regulators, in an order Friday, directed Air India to carry out “additional maintenance actions” on its Boeing fleet “with immediate effect.”
It could be months before a definitive explanation emerges, but videos of the accident and other evidence have begun to offer clues about what might have brought down the plane. Among the initial questions: whether the plane’s wing flaps and slats were properly extended, and why the landing gear, which creates drag, remained down.
Distraught relatives waited at Ahmedabad’s main hospital to claim the bodies of their loved ones for funerals. By late Friday, fewer than a dozen bodies had been released, as medical staff ran DNA tests to determine identities.
On its way down, the plane skidded into the buildings of a medical college near the airport, its tail striking a dining hall where dozens of medical students and junior doctors were having lunch. On Saturday, a crane was still trying to extract the tail of the aircraft from the badly damaged building, and rescuers pulled out another body from one of its rooms.
Late Friday, the damaged area remained cordoned off after Prime Minister Narendra Modi had visited to survey the wreckage. Earth-moving machinery was clearing debris as students from the college came out carrying personal belongings like books and clothing that they had retrieved. Many said they had spent the night elsewhere, in hotels.
While the death toll among the passengers was clear by the end of Thursday, the day the plane went down, exactly how many on the ground died in the impact and fire caused by the crash is still uncertain. The government has remained tight-lipped, but security officials at the site and medical doctors say as many as three dozen people were probably killed in addition to those onboard the plane. The official death toll stands at 269.
Pragati K.B. is a reporter for The Times based in New Delhi, covering news from across India.
Mujib Mashal is the South Asia bureau chief for The Times, helping to lead coverage of India and the diverse region around it, including Bangladesh, Sri Lanka, Nepal and Bhutan.
Suhasini Raj is a reporter based in New Delhi who has covered India for The Times since 2014.
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