RAWALPINDI: The Safety Investigation Board (SIB) has sent the flight data recorder, commonly known as the black box, of the ill-fated Pakistan International Airlines flight PK-661 that crashed near Havelian on Dec 7 to France for decoding.

All 47 people on board were killed in the crash.

“After getting the black box decoding report, the investigator will lift the debris from the crash site and will shift it to BBIA to find out what actually caused the plane crash,” Aviation Division Secretary Irfan Elahi told Dawn.

He said that the work to lift the debris of the ATR-42 plane would start soon. “Basically, the black box decoding report will identify the real cause of the plane crash and the investigators will start their work from that point while assessing the specific areas of the crashed plane as per the report,” he said.

On the other hand, the site alongside the runway had been selected to dump the debris and wreckage of the ATR-42, which the authorities said would be removed soon from the crash site. Experts of France-based turboprop aircraft manufacture ATR who had been in Islamabad since last Monday to assist Pakistani authorities investigating the ATR-42 plane crash had left for France on Saturday.

They had held meetings with officials concerned and visited the crash site, some 80 kilometres north of Benazir Bhutto International Airport.

A senior official told Dawn that the French company is preparing its report on the plane crash and it had interviewed some officials and reviewed record of the air control tower.

He said that experts from the engine manufacturing company also arrived in the country and brought some pieces of the ATR’s engine with them to make analysis report. They would send the report soon.

Sources close to the investigation told Dawn that the investigators were assessing the things like engine failed, pilot reduced speed, dropped altitude, free fall due to structure damage, pilot shut down the engine and shut down the malfunctioned engine and what seemingly happened in the incident.

They said the investigators got initial report from the ACT that flight signalled an engine failure at 4.12pm at 13,375 feet height. However, they said as soon as the engine failure was reported, the aircraft started descending and within a minute the PK-661 disappeared from the radar.

Meanwhile, a spokesman for PIA said that six ATR flights were operated on Monday — PK-605 (Islamabad-Gilgit), PK-606 (Gilgit-Islamabad), PK-249 (Islamabad-Kabul), PK-250 (Kabul-Islamabad), PK-681 (Islamabad-Multan) and PK-682 (Multan-Islamabad). He said Gilgit and Chitral flights on C-130 were operated on Sunday — PK-605 (Islamabad-Gilgit), PK-606 (Gilgit-Islamabad), PK-660 (Islamabad-Chitral) and PK-661 (Chitral-Islamabad).

Published in Dawn, December 20th, 2016