Black Boxes From Afriqiyah Airways Crash in Libya Go to Paris for Analysis

“Black-box” flight recorders from the Airbus SAS plane that crashed in Libya last week killing 103 people will be released to experts in Paris for analysis.

Cockpit voice and data recorders from the Afriqiyah Airways Airbus A330 are to be transferred to France’s BEA air-accident investigation branch tomorrow, said Daw Najy, who is leading the crash probe for Libya’s Civil Aviation Authority.

“We’re hoping the read-out of the boxes can begin tomorrow afternoon,” Najy said in a telephone interview from Tripoli, where the twin-engine wide-body plane crashed early on May 12 during its final approach after a flight from Johannesburg.

The move to send the black boxes to Paris came after French and U.S. crash investigators revealed they were still waiting for the recorders to be released so that information could be extracted and used to shed more light on the accident.

“Our concern is that the boxes should be read,” BEA chief investigator Alain Bouillard said in an interview yesterday at the agency’s headquarters in the French capital.

Among foreign agencies assisting Libyan authorities, only the BEA and the U.S. National Transportation Safety Board have the technology to read the flight recorders, Bouillard said.

“The NTSB has offered to assist the Libyan government in whatever means are requested,” Peter Knudson, a spokesman for the agency, said by telephone before the Libyan announcement. “We are certainly equipped to read the black boxes.”

The flight recorders will arrive in Paris around midday tomorrow aboard an Afriqiyah plane, accompanied by investigators from the Libyan CAA, Najy said.

A nine-year-old Dutch boy was the only survivor among the 93 passengers and 11 crew members aboard the crashed plane.

To contact the reporter on this story: Laurence Frost in Paris at lfrost4@bloomberg.net

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