2nd Recorder of Air-India Jet Recovered

A submersible robot Thursday recovered the flight recorder of an Air-India jet, the last major piece of evidence that could explain why the Boeing 747 crashed last month in the Atlantic, killing all 329 people aboard.

The American-built Scarab underwater robot brought up the data recorder box in the steel claws of its extendable arms in the morning, almost 24 hours after it recovered the plane’s cockpit voice recorder.

Both devices were located about 150 miles off the Irish coast in about 6,600 feet of water. No salvage operation had ever been attempted from such a depth before.

An international recovery team is hoping that the flight recorder--detailing instrument readings on the plane--along with the voice recorder, an examination of wreckage and forensic tests on the bodies recovered, will indicate whether an explosion or structural failure caused the crash.

Sikh extremists and Kashmiri separatists have claimed that they put a bomb on board the jumbo jet, which was flying from Toronto to Bombay via London when it went down.

The French recovery ship Leon Thevenin operated the remote-controlled Scarab. The ship is scheduled to dock in Cork early today.

The head of the Indian investigating team, Cmdr. Sunil Kulkarni, said the recorders appear to be undamaged. Both were sealed in a water-filled container to prevent salt damaging the tapes during drying.

He said they will be flown to Bombay within the next two days, where they will be carefully washed before being opened and played back.

Might Not Show Anything

The chief investigator for the Canadian Civil Aviation Safety Board, Pierre de Niverville, who will be accompanying the recorders to Bombay, warned that they might not show anything.

“If there was a sudden electrical failure, they would give us nothing, since they operate off the plane’s power system,” he said.

But he added, “If the plane took some time to break up, then we should get quite a bit of information, such as the reactions of the crew, sounds of the engines and any communications with ground control.”

De Niverville said it could take days, or even weeks before the recorders could be decoded.

The director of the recovery mission, Jacques Genoux, speaking by radio from the Leon Thevenin, told reporters in Paris that the recovery operation lasted six hours.