Sharjah crash: Investigation hit by black box failure

Aircrash investigators probing the fatal crash of a Boeing 707 cargo plane at Sharjah Airport have suffered a setback as they have been unable to retrieve information from the aurcraft's flight data recorders (FDR).

The two devices, which monitor cockpit conversations and aircraft vital signs, failed to record the jet’s final moments before crashing shortly after take-off at Sharjah International Airport, Saif al Suwaidi, the head of the General Civil Aviation Authority (GCAA), said.

“If they were working,” he said, “maybe they would give us more clues as to what actually happened. But now you have to depend on different things to get to the causes of the crash but there was no good information on the black boxes."

A spokesman for the investigation bureau (AAIB), which previously confirmed receiving a UAE government request to examine the black boxes, would only say it performed the task requested of it by the GCAA. He deferred all other questions to the UAE officials.

The crash happened on October 21, about two minutes after take-off, killing all six Sudanese crewmen on board and narrowly missing nearby neighbourhoods. Video footage of the crash has been posted on Youtube.

There is concern that the FDRs may not have been working properly. They are typically encased in half a centimetre of stainless steel, and capable of withstanding temperatures of more than 1,100C,and are purposely designed to endure extreme conditions.

Abu Dhabi newspaper, The National, quoted Ronan Hubert, of the Aircraft Crashes Record Office, a Geneva-based research organisation, said he could not recall an incident where the recorders were destroyed because of a crash. Al Suwaidi said that investigators from the US would soon be flying to the UAE to assist in the inquiry into the crash.

Officials at Azza, which flew regular flights from Sharjah to its headquarters in Khartoum, the Sudanese capital, could not be reached for comment.