News
Sunday, April 22, 2012
Inquiry can take upto 1 year: CAAISLAMABAD: The black box of the ill-fated Bhoja airliner has been found and would be sent abroad for decoding which might take “three months to one year”, Civil Aviation Authority (CAA) Director General Nadeem Yusafzai said on Saturday. Addressing a press conference, he said that there was no technical fault in the plane and it was thoroughly checked before its departure from Karachi. “Maintenance and performance of the aircraft was checked as per standards as the CCA makes no compromises on it,” he said. He said the flight operation was according to rules and the plane was flying smoothly until the tragedy. He said the control tower had given clearance to the pilot for landing with instructions to check all the gears. The DG said the landing gears of the plane were down but it was to be investigated what happened when the plane started descending. He said he had listened to a recording of the conversation between the pilot and the control tower and said the pilot was in a “happy” mood. He said the weather was bad, but noted that another plane landed safely at the airport five minutes after the crash. Yusafzai said the plane was locked into the instrument landing system, an approach system that provides precision guidance for aircraft, when it suddenly dropped from 2,900 feet to 2,000 feet. “It just went down, into a dive,” he said, adding, “Then contact was lost and the blip disappeared from the radar.” “What happened in this period, that has to be investigated. Was there a downdraft, was there an engine failure?” He denied there was any “political pressure” in the awarding of the licence to Bhoja Air. The CAA DG urged people not to speculate on the cause of the crash before all the evidence had been collected. agencies
Courtesy www.dailytimes.com.pk