AP News, June 16th, 2007
A search team has found the cockpit voice recorder of a Kenya Airways plane that crashed in Cameroon last month, killing 114 people, the airline's chief executive officer said.
The voice recorder was found Friday afternoon and Cameroonian authorities are now making arrangements to get it to Canada as soon as possible, Kenya Airways CEO Titus Naikuni said in a brief statement late Friday.
When it is analyzed, the voice recorder is expected to reveal the final exchanges between the plane's captain and his co-pilot and also any conversations with the control tower in Cameroon's commercial capital of Douala.
The Kenya Airways flight nose-dived into a swamp in the West African country less than two minutes after taking off from Douala on a stormy night May 5. The Boeing 737-800 had been bound for Kenya.
The plane's data recorder was found last month and taken to Canada for analysis. A preliminary review showed no evidence of a mechanical malfunction, the Cameroon Civil Aviation Authority said in a statement posted on its Web site Friday.
The authority said a full report of what led to the crash will take as long as a year.
The preliminary investigation found that all crew members were sufficiently trained and certified according to expected aviation guidelines, the statement said.
Though the flight was delayed about an hour because of thunderstorms and heavy rain, the preliminary report suggested that conditions had cleared by the time the plane took off.
Pilots from two other airlines, however, said they waited longer to take off because they were concerned about the weather.
The report, issued on Monday, also said the Kenya Airways jetliner reached 3,000 feet before nose-diving sharply at a 45-degree angle "for undetermined reasons." The plane disintegrated on impact.
The report says that investigators plan to also review the performance of the flight crew and consider if there were any regulatory oversights.
The U.S. National Transportation Safety Board is assisting Cameroon in the investigation, along with aviation authorities from Kenya and Canada.
