“The Flight Data Recorder (FDR) and the the Cockpit Voice Recorder (CVR) – both widely known as black boxes – should be recovered and their data analysed to establish the exact causes of the fatal airliner’s crash off the coast of Beirut,”
Haile Awraris, an aviation engineer previously working with the Ethiopain Airlines said.
Lebanese officials on Monday said a command tower recording showed that the pilot of the doomed Flight ET409 airliner ignored flight control tower instructions.
The report surfaced after Lebanese Prime Minister Saad Hariri chaired an emergency meeting with his officials on Monday, and Defense Minister Elias Murr went on TV. The minister said the pilot ignored instructions to “turn and avoid the storm.”
But Awraris doubted that Air Traffic Controllers (ATC) would clear the plane for takeoff under severe weather conditions, nor the pilots would knowingly plunge into the eye of the storm.
The aviation engineer said no information would be complete before the devices were retrieved from the crash site, and their data analysed.
CVR records the communication between the flight crew and ATC. From this device, experts will know what kind of ATC clearance the flight crew were given, how the crew responded to the instruction, and the communication between the flight crew themselves pre-, during and post-incident communication. On the other hand, the Flight Data Recorder (FDR) records all aircraft parameters, including which engine flamed out first, flight control surface positions, all pilot inputs, and other aircraft systems input and output.
From the FDR, experts would be able to identify which systems of the aircraft turned off first, at what moment the pilot lost control of the aircraft, and how long after takeoff the incident happened. All technical problems of the aircraft are recorded by this device.
The media reported that
Lebanese deep-sea divers as well as the USS Ramage, which has specialised sonar equipment, are searching for the black boxes.
The devices are crash-protected and installed on the aft-section of the aircraft, which is relatively the safest part, Awararis said. “It’s a matter of time before the devices, which have water-activated batteries that transmit signals for detection, are found to undo the riddle.”
Despite the tragedy, media reports cited Ethiopian Airlines for safety and overall excellence.
BEIRUT (Jan 25) – An Ethiopian Airlines plane carrying 90 people caught fire and crashed into the sea minutes after taking off from Beirut early Monday, setting off a frantic search as passenger seats, baby sandals and other debris washed ashore. At least 34 bodies were recovered.
The cause of the crash was not immediately known. Lebanon has seen stormy weather since Sunday night, with crackling thunder, lightning and rain. The plane went down in darkness and crashed into water that reached just 64 Fahrenheit (18 degrees Celsius) by afternoon.
Lebanese President Michel Suleiman said terrorism was not suspected in the crash of Flight 409, which was headed for the Ethiopian capital, Addis Ababa.
“Sabotage is ruled out as of now,” he said.
Weeping relatives streamed into Beirut’s airport to wait for news on their loved ones. One woman dropped to her knees in tears; another cried out, “Where is my son?”
Andree Qusayfi said his 35-year-old brother, Ziadh, was traveling to Ethiopia for his job at a computer company, but was planning to return to Lebanon for good soon.
“We begged him to postpone his flight because of the storm,” Qusayfi said, his eyes red from crying. “But he insisted on going because he had work appointments.”
Zeinab Seklawi said her 24-year-old son Yasser called her as he was boarding.
“I told him, ‘God be with you,’ and I went to sleep,” Seklawi said. “Please find my son. I know he’s alive and wouldn’t leave me.”
The dead include several children, according to a Lebanese defense official who asked that his name not be used because he is not authorized to speak to publicly.
The Boeing 737-800 took off around 2:30 a.m. (7:30 p.m. EST) and went down 2 miles (3.5 kilometers) off the coast, said Ghazi Aridi, the public works and transportation minister. The Lebanese army said in a statement the plane was on fire shortly after takeoff.
“The weather undoubtedly was very bad,” Aridi told reporters at the airport.
Pieces of the plane and debris were washing ashore in the hours after the crash, including passenger seats, a baby sandal, a fire extinguisher and bottles of medicine.
The wife of Denis Pietton, the French ambassador to Lebanon, was on the plane, according to the French embassy.
Helicopters and naval ships were scrambled for a rescue effort as huge waves slammed into the shore. Lebanese Prime Minister Saad Hariri announced a day of mourning and closed schools and government offices.
A statement from the defense ministry in Cyprus, which sent reinforcements to help in the search, said 34 bodies have been recovered so far.
Ethiopian Airlines’ CEO Girma Wake told journalists in Addis Ababa that he had no information on the fate of those on board or about the cause of the crash. He said the aircraft had been serviced on Dec. 25 and passed inspection.
He also said the plane had been leased in September from CIT Aerospace. Calls to CIT Aerospace were not immediately returned Monday.
The plane was carrying 90 people, including 83 passengers and 7 crew, Lebanese officials said. Aridi, the transportation minister, identified the passengers as 54 Lebanese, 22 Ethiopians, one Iraqi, one Syrian, one Canadian of Lebanese origin, one Russian of Lebanese origin, a French woman and two Britons of Lebanese origin.
Ethiopian Airlines reported that there were 82 passengers and eight crew; the discrepancy could not immediately be explained.
The Boeing 737 is considered one of the safest planes in airline service. The jet was first introduced in the 1960s, and today is the workhorse on many short- and medium-range routes.
Still, over the past 15 years it was involved in a series of incidents and crashes linked to a valve in the rudder assembly. This reportedly would malfunction and cause the rudder to turn independently of the pilot’s commands.
The problem was considered resolved after operators of older Boeing 737s were ordered to carry out inspections and upgrades of the critical rudder control systems.
Sidney Dekker, a professor of flight safety at the School of Aviation at Lund University in Sweden, said the rudder problem has been corrected by the manufacturer and that he’d be “hugely surprised” if it had anything to do with the crash.
Dekker, himself a 737 pilot, said that if reports of an engine fire proved to be correct, the accident could have possibly resulted from a loss of control at relatively low altitude.
He noted that the 737’s engines were overpowered in order to fulfill single-engine takeoff performance requirements. “This tends to produce a turning movement toward the dead engine in the case of the loss of a powerplant at takeoff,” he said.
Poor visibility in low cloud combined with high winds may have contributed to the problem faced by the pilots, he said.
In February 2009, a Turkish Airlines Boeing 737-800 plane crashed short of the runway at Amsterdam’s Schiphol Airport, killing nine passengers and crew. Dutch investigators say the plane crashed because of a false reading from a faulty altimeter.
The state-owned Ethiopian Airlines announced last week that it signed an agreement with Boeing to buy 10 more of the 737-800s at an estimated $767 million. The order will expand the airline’s fleet from the 36 aircraft it has now — not including the 737-800 that crashed Monday.
Aviation safety analyst Chris Yates said it was far too early to say what caused the crash, but he noted that modern aircraft are built to withstand all but the foulest weather conditions.
“One wouldn’t have thought that a nasty squall in and of itself would be the prime cause of an accident like this,” said Yates, an analyst based in Manchester, England. He noted that reports of fire could suggest “some cataclysmic failure of one of the engines” or that something had been sucked into the engine, such as a bird or debris.
Ethiopian Airlines has long had a reputation for high-quality service compared to other African airlines, with two notable crashes in more than 20 years.
A hijacked Ethiopian Airlines jet crash-landed off the Comoros Islands in the Indian Ocean when it ran out of fuel in November 1996, killing 126 of the 175 people aboard. In September 1988, an Ethiopian Airlines jet crashed shortly after taking off when it ran into a flock of birds, killing 31 of the 104 people on board.
Boeing said it is coordinating with the U.S. National Transportation Safety Board to assist Lebanese authorities in the investigation.
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Associated Press writers Zeina Karam and Bassem Mroue in Beirut, Slobodan Lekic in Brussels, Menelaos Hadjicostis in Nicosia, Cyprus and Samson Haileyesus in Addis Ababa, Ethiopia contributed to this report.
