6,600 Feet Down, Robot Grabs Air-India Jet Recorder

Investigators Wednesday recovered the cockpit voice recorder of Air-India Flight 182, which crashed into the Atlantic off Ireland on June 23, killing all 329 people on board, the Indian crash investigation team announced.

A submersible robot picked up the recorder at about 6,600 feet, believed to be a record depth for this type of recovery.

The recorder is one of two so-called “black boxes” that investigators hope will shed light on why the Boeing 747 went down without transmitting a distress signal.

There has been speculation that the crash was caused by a terrorist bomb, and several anonymous phone callers have claimed responsibility for the crash on behalf of extremist elements of India’s minority Sikh community and Kashmiri separatists. Sikh leaders have said the claims were bogus.

The Air-India flight had taken off from Montreal and was on its way to India with a refueling stop in London when it crashed. About an hour earlier, baggage taken off a CP Air flight from Vancouver to Tokyo exploded at Japan’s Narita International Airport.

Two Japanese baggage handlers were killed and there was speculation of a link between the two incidents.

The recorder was located by the robot and brought aboard the French vessel Leon Thevenin at 8 a.m., said a statement issued by the team.

“It is in fairly good shape,” H.S. Khola, India’s director of aviation safety, told reporters in Cork.

Scarab Submersible

Khola said the underwater robot, known as a Scarab submersible, was sent back down immediately to search for the jumbo jet’s flight data recorder, which takes continuous readings of the aircraft’s key mechanical and electrical systems.

“Since we have recovered one, we are expecting the second to be close by and we are expecting to get it very soon,” Khola said.

Khola said the recorders will be returned to India, which is responsible for the crash probe, for examination.

Khola said no aircraft flight recorder had ever been recovered from such deep waters--6,600 feet.

The cockpit voice recorder takes down conversation on the flight deck on a continuous-loop tape. Its sensitive microphone also would pick up any alarms if they went off before the crash.

Located in Tail Section

Both it and the flight data recorder are located in the tail section of the airplane and are connected by wires to the cockpit.

Indian investigators have said an explosion on board is the most likely explanation for the craft’s sudden descent and the pilot’s radio silence. However, Canadian crash experts assisting the probe have said that no forensic evidence--traces of explosives or telltale blast damage--of a bomb has been found in the debris or on the bodies recovered so far.

The statement from the Indian team said the Scarab robot, operating from the Leon Thevenin, homed in on the recorder’s radio beacon and turned its television cameras on the “black box” to identify it.

The flight recorders’ beacons are designed to operate for about a month. When the recorder was brought up, about two weeks of search time remained.

The Scarab maneuvered close to the recorder with its propeller motors and grasped the recorder with its manipulator arms, officials said. The craft was then winched to the surface, a process that takes approximately two hours.

Another Mission Set

Meanwhile, officials were readying another Scarab on board the Canadian coast guard vessel John Cabot to join the search and perhaps recover more wreckage. The John Cabot arrived in Cork harbor on Tuesday and is equipped to stay at the scene for up to six weeks if necessary.

Large chunks of the plane have been found on a four-mile-long stretch of ocean floor about 100 miles southwest of Ireland.

Ken Lauterstein, the London representative of the U.S. Federal Aviation Administration, said the cockpit voice and flight data recorders are key pieces of evidence in any crash investigation.

“The CVR is basically a small microphone mounted in an overhead panel in the cockpit,” he said. “It’s a tape recorder. It’s very sensitive, designed to pick up the sound of voices in the cockpit and the sound of any warning devices that might go off in the cockpit.”

The flight data recorder, Lauterstein said, records power settings of the engines, the course of the aircraft, its heading, altitude, airspeed and other instrument readings.

“As opposed to sounds, these are actual system settings in the aircraft. It provides a more accurate assessment of the situation of the aircraft prior to and at the time of the accident,” he said.