Monday, January 19, 2009
AFP - 2 35 NEW YORK (AFP) - - Black box recordings retrieved Sunday from the crashed US Airways jet appear to back the theory that a collision with birds brought down the plane, authorities said.
Investigators have yet to analyze the wrecked engines and fuselage of the Airbus, but cockpit recordings released Sunday strongly supported indications that the plane lost all power after being hit by birds.
The voice recording shows that "about 90 seconds after take-off the captain remarks about birds," Kitty Higgins, from the National Transport Safety Board (NTSB), told a news conference.
"One second later the cockpit voice recorder recorded the sound of thumps and rapid decrease of engine sounds. The captain acknowledges that both engines have lost power and he takes control of the aircraft," Higgins said.
The other black box, which records flight data, also indicates that both engines lost power simultaneously in Thursday's drama.
This sequence was consistent with earlier debriefings of the two pilots who told the NTSB they had seen large brown birds smash into the plane and had lost power in both engines immediately.
The Airbus ditched in New York's Hudson River with no loss of life thanks to a skillful splash-landing and well-oiled rescue operation.
Salvage crews raised the sunken Airbus overnight and were able to remove the black boxes. The plane, which is mostly intact, but badly damaged along the underside, was to be taken by barge from New York to a site in New Jersey.
A police team on Saturday said it believed it had found the location of an engine torn off in the crash and lost in the Hudson.
Higgins said the NTSB might need about a year to complete its report into the accident.
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