MULTAN, July 14: Preliminary report on the July 10 air crash may be made public within next two or two and a half months, says special investigation board chief Air Commodore Junaid Amin.

Talking to APP on Friday, he said the wreckage was being removed. “We are shifting the engines of the Fokker to Karachi and preserving rest of the debris at Multan airport to proceed on the investigation,” he added.

He said the board members were working 20 hours a day so that initial report could be prepared at the earliest.

The air commodore observed each screw and bolt of the engine and every tiny or big piece of the aircraft could be a valuable piece of evidence to ascertain the cause of the crash.

He said the voice recorder and black box of the charred plane had been taken into custody. He said most probably the voice recorder would be sent to UK for expert opinion while the black box might be deciphered by the investigation board. He said if the black box could not be deciphered locally, it too would be sent to England for an expert opinion.

To a question, Junaid Amin said another expert had already ruled out the possibility of an act of sabotage. “Apparently it is some technical fault which seems to have led to the crash. It has yet to be ascertained whether the plane caught fire on the runway, after the take-off or at the time of collapse.” Amin said such a crash was always a difficult puzzle which needed sufficient time to reach a conclusion.

FLIGHT SCHEDULE: PIA has revised the schedule of flights due to grounding of its fokker planes.

According to local PIA office, a boeing will arrive Rahim Yar Khan from Karachi after a stopover at Sukkur on every Saturday, Monday and Thursday. The same flight will depart for Lahore and Islamabad where it will leave for Karachi via same route.

The PIA has suspended the Wednesday flight.—APP