Mostly intact black box seen as key break in investigation

The black box recovered from the Air India flight 171 crash site in Ahmedabad shows minimal damage and the data it contains is likely to be extracted in India itself, officials said on Saturday, raising hopes for some early clues about what caused the Boeing 787 jet to crash just 33 seconds after take-off.

- Prawesh Lama and Neha LM Tripathi

The relatively intact condition of the flight data recorder represents a crucial break for investigators, who typically face lengthy delays in air crash probes when damaged black boxes must be sent to original equipment manufacturers for extracting the data. In this case, that would have been Boeing's HQ in the US. To be sure, the data may still have to be shared with Boeing and the manufacturer of the plane's engines, GE, for analysis.

A police officer said crash site analysis by National Security Guard teams using advanced scanners and sniffer dogs found no evidence of explosives at the BJ Medical College complex, where the plane crashed and exploded, killing 241 of the 242 on board besides several students of the college and residents of a nearby colony.

"The black box will give a clear idea of the situation before the crash. It was found on Friday and it appears to not be much damaged. Hence it is more likely to be analysed by Indian investigating agency (Aircraft Accident Investigation Bureau- AAIB) at its headquarters in Delhi," said an official close to the investigation, who asked not to be named.

In April, the civil aviation ministry inaugurated a new laboratory built in Delhi to correlate data from cockpit voice recorders, radar, and flight data recorders to enhance accuracy in air investigations.