Russian aviation investigators began examining the damaged "black boxes" Sunday for the cause of a crash that killed 62 people when an airliner plunged out of the sky while attempting to land in bad weather.
Russia's Interstate Aviation Committee said it had recovered the plane’s two black boxes, or flight data recorders, but the devices had sustained extensive “mechanical damage.”
The boxes could offer important details of the final moments before the FlyDubai flight, which originated in Dubai in the United Arab Emirates, crashed Saturday in Rostov-on-Don, a city near the eastern end of the Black Sea, about 600 miles south of Moscow.
The Boeing 737-800, operated by discount airline FlyDubai, crashed just short of the runway, then exploded into a fireball. The plane was carrying 55 passengers and seven crewmembers. There were no survivors.
The committee said late Sunday that investigators had retrieved data from the plane's flight data recorder, which keeps an electronic log of how the airplane was working. That device had "good recording quality" and included information about the plane's final seconds, the committee said.
The second black box, used to record sounds in the cockpit, was more badly damaged. Officials were unable to access the sounds so far but continue to work on it, the committee said.
Radar recordings show the airliner attempted to land at Rostov-on-Don, which was buffeted by strong winds, then circled for two hours in a holding pattern before attempting to land again. A closed-circuit television recording shows the plane descending at a steep angle before exploding into a blinding fireball.
“We share the desire to get answers as quickly as possible, but at this stage we must not be drawn into speculation,” FlyDubai CEO Ghaith Al Ghaith said in a statement. “We would ask that the investigating authorities are given the time and space they need to report definitively on the causes of the accident."
Former U.S. National Transportation Safety Board member Steven Chealander said Sunday he was surprised that the pilots circled Rostov-on-Don for so long instead of diverting to another airport, and that they attempted to land in such strong winds. He said investigators won't be able to determine whether those decisions caused the crash until they can review the recordings and other evidence.
Analyzing the data recorders is a painstaking process, Chealander said. The recorders monitor hundreds of pieces of information about the aircraft and sounds from inside the cockpit. Each one could offer clues about why the plane went down, and Chealander said investigators will have to look at all of them.
"Everything's destroyed and you have no witnesses to what went on in the plane," he said. "There are a lot of rocks for the investigators to overturn."
Boeing said in a statement Saturday that it was sending a team to Russia to assist in the investigation. Officials from the NTSB could not be reached Sunday.
Russian Transport Minister Maxim Sokolov said that teams had finished searching for debris on the runway and the airport would reopen Monday, Russia Today reported.
Most of the passengers were Russian. Some of their relatives gathered Sunday at Rostov-on-Don’s airport, laying red-and-white carnations at an impromptu memorial, according to Reuters.
