As India mourns the death of 18 passengers of the doomed Air India Express plane that skidded off the tabletop runway at Kerala's Kozhikode Airport, a crucial black box has been recovered that will likely throw some light on how the aircraft crashed.
What is a black box
A black box is an electronic recording device placed in a plane to facilitate the probe of aviation-related incidents. These black boxes are actually known as flight recorders.
Probe underway
Investigations into the cause of the crash are underway. Meanwhile, senior officials of the airlines and aviation regulator DGCA are in Kozhikode while Civil Aviation Minister Hardeep Singh Puri also arrived in north Kerala to take a stock of the situation and implementation of the relief measures.
Taking to Twitter, Puri said, "Digital Flight Data Recorder (DFDR) and Cockpit Voice Recorder (CVR) of the ill-fated aircraft have been retrieved. AAIB (Aircraft Accident Investigation Bureau) is conducting investigations."
What happened on Friday night
The Air India Express plane Boeing-737, which was repatriating Indians stranded in Dubai due to the coronavirus pandemic, overshot the runway of the Calicut International Airport in heavy rain near the southern city of Kozhikode on Friday.
ALSO READ: Air India plane skids off runway at Calicut airport, both pilots dead
The aircraft fell into a valley and broke into two-piece on landing at the Karipur International Airport.
In an interview with news agency Reuters partner ANI on Sunday, Anil Kumar, head of India's Directorate General of Civil Aviation, said the country would open the recovered transcripts to international investigators, as well as manufacturer Boeing.
"Only after conducting a thorough and unbiased probe, can we tell what exactly happened," Kumar said.
(With agency inputs)
