The two black boxes from the Gulf Air Airbus 320 that crashed into waters off Bahrain, killing all 143 people on board left the Gulf Arab island early Sunday and are expected in Washington later in the day, a civil aviation authority official in Manama told AFP.
"They left under escort on a British Airways flight to London early Sunday and are due in Washington some time later in the day", the official said.
The cockpit voice recorder and flight data recorder, which record the pilot's conversations and the plane's technical data, will be examined by the US National Transportation and Safety Board (NTS).
Meanwhile, the English-language Gulf Daily News reported Sunday that the team investigating Wednesday's crash had ruled out that there had been any explosion on the doomed plane.
"Members of the Accident Investigation Boards Technical Investigation Committee had noted that none of the victims had burn marks and that their injuries were the result of massive trauma caused by sudden impact", the paper quoted an aviation source as saying.
Investigators "saw nothing in the retrieved wreckage, in the still-submerged fuselage and notably on the wings and aircraft engines that indicates the plane sustained flammable damage", the source said.
"There is nothing pointing to a fire of any kind", he stressed, adding the flames which eye-witnesses claimed were spewing from one of the Airbus engines were more than likely to be reflections of the planes lights at an unusual angle.
"Under proper questioning and within neutral surroundings, I think we’ll find more logical explanations as to what these people actually witnessed," he said -- MANAMA (AFP)
© 2000 Al Bawaba (www.albawaba.com)
