DEPARTMENT OF Transport air accident investigators hope two black box recorders recovered from the Manx2.com flight which crashed with the loss of six lives will provide them with clues as to what caused the incident.
Paddy Judge, an inspector with the air accident investigation unit, said the five-man team had recovered the aircraft’s flight data recorder and cockpit voice recorder from the wreckage of the aircraft on Thursday night.
Mr Judge, a former pilot, said the data recorder had been taken to the unit’s headquarters at Gormanston, Co Meath, where investigators will download data which records the precise movements made by the aircraft.
The cockpit voice recorder has been taken to Britain by a member of the British air accidents investigation branch to its centre at Farnborough, where staff will endeavour to download the data recording all communications from the pilot.
Six people – the captain, his co-pilot and four passengers – were killed when the Manx2 flight from Belfast crashed when landing at the airport on Thursday morning.
The six other passengers were injured when the aircraft overturned and caught fire in a third attempt by the pilots to land in foggy conditions.
Two of the survivors were discharged from hospital yesterday, while the other four were continuing to be treated for serious but non-life threatening injuries.
The crash investigators have spoken to staff at air traffic control in Cork and have begun examining radar tapes from that morning. They have also interviewed five of the six survivors.
“We have make sure all the data matches up, that the information we get from air traffic control matches up with what we see on the radar tapes with what we recover from the cockpit voice recorder which matches up with what we recover from the flight data recorder,” said Mr Judge.
“Once we get all those things all pointing in the same direction we can say with a good idea what has happened – that will allow us to determine why it happened, which is quite difficult sometimes and if we know why it happened we can try to make sure it doesn’t happen again.”
According to Mr Judge, the investigation has established from a debris trail that the aircraft’s first point of impact was with the main runway R17, and that it left a debris trail extending some 180-190m (590-620ft) to the point where the aircraft came to a stop off the runway.
However, he said it was not yet clear what part of the aircraft first struck the runway and it would be wrong at this stage to speculate at what point the aircraft overturned before coming to rest upside down in the grass off the runway.
The badly damaged aircraft was last night removed from the runway in one piece after the investigators managed to get supporting bands underneath the fuselage.
It was then removed to the cargo area where it will be cut into sections for transportation to Gormanston.
Mr Judge confirmed that the investigation team would examine service logs and other documentation from the wreckage and they will be joined in their inquiry by three inspectors from the UK as the aircraft had departed from an airport controlled by British aviation authorities.
Two Spanish Air Accident Investigation Unit experts are also assisting in their inquiry in obtaining and examining all service records and other documentation relating to the aircraft from its owners Flightline BCN, which also made two of its staff available to the investigation.
The US authorities have also provided assistance with four staff members from the National Transport Safety Board travelling to Cork to assist with the inquiry because the Fairchild Metroliner was manufactured in the US.
