Recovered Black Box Could Tell Story of Ethiopian Plane Crash
Lebanese marine commandos managed to pull one of the two black boxes from the crashed Ethiopian plane which is "critical" to determining the cause of the crash.
Transportation Minister Ghazi Aridi, which has described the recovery of the black box on Sunday as "very important," said efforts continued to pull the cockpit voice recorder."The black box is very important because it includes all the jet's technical data," Aridi said in remarks published by several Beirut newspapers on Monday.
Head of the Pilots' Syndicate Mahmoud Houmani said Monday that Lebanon should not expect to receive the final report into the plane crash before six months.
A statement issued by the Lebanese Army Command said the black box was retrieved around 11:35am Sunday and taken to Beirut Naval Base where it was handed over to the plane's investigation team.
Prime Minister Saad Hariri immediately put his private plane at the disposal of the investigation team. The team flew to Paris with the black box early Monday.
"Divers from Navy Commando Regiment were able to pull eight bodies belonging to victims of the ill-fated Ethiopian plane up till now, the search is ongoing to find the remaining bodies," said the army communiqué issued Sunday afternoon, bringing to 23 the number of bodies pulled.
Director of Rafik Hariri state hospital in Beirut Wassim Wazzan said Monday that the hospital received seven of the eight retrieved bodies.
"We will have more information about the DNA test results in the next 36 hours," Wazzan said in a radio station interview.
Aridi said the flight data recorder had been retrieved and that efforts continued to recover the cockpit voice recorder.
He said both boxes were found under a rear section of the fuselage.
Media reports said the black box was found off the coast of Naameh about 45 meters deep.
The Boeing 737-800 with 90 people on board bound for Addis Ababa crashed in flames into the Mediterranean Sea in the early morning hours of Jan. 25, just minutes after takeoff from Beirut airport in stormy weather.
No survivors were found from Flight 409, and search teams have been struggling to recover bodies from the crash site as most victims were believed to be still strapped to their seats.
