Investigators begin decoding black boxes from NW China plane crash

An investigation team from Azerbaijan arrived in Beijing Thursday to join Chinese experts to decode the flight data and voice recorders and attempt to find the cause of the cargo plane crash that killed seven crew Tuesday in northwest China.

A spokesman for the National Civil Aviation Administration of China (CAAC) said the black boxes were sent to Beijing on Wednesday and seem undamaged after being unloaded from the crashed cargo plane.

The spokesman said the decoding of the recorders by both sides began after the Azerbaijani investigation team arrived, but declined to reveal how long the study will last.

The nine-member Azerbaijani team, headed by a vice-chairman of the accident investigation committee of the country, flew to Urumqi, capital of the Xinjiang Uygur Autonomous Region, on Wednesday, and had several talks with China's investigation team after inspecting the crash site.

China has promised to fully cooperate with the Azerbaijani experts in the investigation and provide good conditions for the relatives of the victims.

The Azerbaijan cargo liner, a Russian-made IL-76, crashed at 10:50 a.m. Tuesday just two minutes after taking off from the Urumqi international airport. All the seven crew members, six Ukrainians and one Azerbaijani, were killed after the plane loaded with clothes, shoes and other daily necessities plunged into a local farm some 10 km from the airport.

Eyewitnesses said the pilots of the cargo plane clearly tried an emergency landing to avoid the crash, but failed, according to previous reports.

Source: Xinhua