Investigation teams retrieve data from AI flight black boxes

The Aircraft Accident Investigation Bureau (AAIB) on Thursday confirmed the successful recovery and ongoing analysis of critical flight data from the black boxes of the Air India flight that crashed on June 12 in Ahmedabad killing all but one of the 242 on board and nearly 30 on ground.

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India, a signatory to the ICAO Chicago Convention, is conducting the inquiry in strict accordance with international aviation norms, particularly ICAO Annex 13 and the Aircraft (Investigation of Accidents and Incidents) Rules, 2017.

According to a senior official from the Ministry of Civil Aviation, a multidisciplinary investigation team was constituted on June 13. The team includes experts from the AAIB, an aviation medicine specialist, an air traffic control (ATC) officer and representatives from the US National Transportation Safety Board (NTSB) in line with global investigative protocols. The cockpit voice recorder (CVR) and flight data recorder (FDR), commonly known as black boxes, were retrieved in separate rescue and debris removal operations — one separate rescue and debris removal operations — one from a rooftop near the crash site on June 13 and the other from the debris on June 16.

“Both devices were kept under 24-hour police protection and continuous CCTV surveillance in Ahmedabad before being flown to Delhi on June 24 by an Indian Air Force aircraft,” the official said. The first black box arrived at the AAIB laboratory in Delhi at 2 pm, escorted by the AAIB Director General. The second followed at 5.15 pm with another AAIB team.

“That evening, technical experts from the AAIB and the NTSB began extracting data. The crash-protected memory module from the front unit was safely accessed and the data was successfully downloaded the following day,” the official said.

The analysis of the CVR and FDR recordings is now in progress. According to the officer, the investigators are working to reconstruct the chain of events that led to the tragedy and to identify contributing factors that could inform future safety measures.