Black boxes from Yemenia flight damaged

A Comoran investigator said today that the black boxes from a Yemenia Airways flight that crashed into the Indian Ocean in June are damaged.

Mohamed Ali Abdou said investigators are still trying to recover the information held in the flight's black boxes. Experts began examining the boxes from the Airbus 310 plane on Monday.

In a statement earlier today, Ali Abdou said it is still unknown what caused the crash. Ali Abdou is assisting French experts from the BEA aviation accident agency. The French agency made no statement Friday.

The boxes were fished out of deep waters northwest of Grand Comoros island late last month by underwater robots.

Yemenia Flight 626 from Paris to Moroni, the capital of Comoros, plunged into the Indian Ocean on the 30th June, killing 152 people. It has been carrying mainly French and Comoran passengers from France's Comoran community.

French officials said that French investigators have evidence that the crash of the Yemenia Air flight was caused by pilot error,

"It seems there was pilot error," one French official told news agency AFP, speaking on condition of anonymity because the French accident inquiry has yet to release formal conclusions. A second official separately confirmed the assumption.

Previously some French officials had suggested that the plane was not safe, but no official explanation for the accident has been given.

Also today, Airbus chief executive Thomas Enders was quoted as saying in the French daily Le Parisien , that the European aircraft manufacturer was working towards replacing 'black box' recorders with a system that transmits flight data via satellite.

He said: "We are examining possibilities for improving the current system by other methods of collecting data. The most important flight data could for example be transmitted in real time by satellite as is already the case for information concerning aircraft maintenance. That is a question we are working on with our partners and suppliers."