France announces initial results of black box of crashed plane

On the afternoon of March 25, the French Civil Aviation Safety Investigation and Analysis Center (BEA), headquartered in Bourget, about 30km north of Paris, held a press conference and announced the initial results of the black box of the Germanwings A320-211 plane that crashed on March 24 in the Alps.

Mr. Rémi Jouty, Director of BEA, Center said that he had retrieved part of the data from the black box, including the recording of speech and sound in the cockpit, and according to him, this data is "usable" although the black box is seriously damaged.

Mr. Rémi Jouty - Director of BEA at the announcement of the investigation results. (Photo: Viet Son/Vietnam+)

However, Mr. Rémi Jouty did not provide specific information or when the detailed results of the extraction of information from the plane's black box could be announced.

"At this time, we cannot say more or explain why the aircraft lost altitude and crashed, nor why the Air Traffic Control Tower was unable to contact the aircraft," he said.

Immediately after receiving information about the flight crash at 11:15 a.m. on March 24, BEA established an Investigation Committee to operate in coordination with its German (BFU) and Spanish (CIAIAC) counterparts.

Seven investigators were immediately sent to the crash site. A black box from the plane was found at the scene at 5 p.m. the same day due to its signal. The black box was transferred to the BEA Center in Bourget at 9:45 a.m. on March 25.

The center has urgently taken steps to exploit the plane's black box and has initially retrieved part of the cockpit voice recording and BEA is still working to get more information.

“However, so far, investigators have not yet come up with any hypothesis about the cause of the accident,” he stressed.

According to information released by BEA at the press conference, at around 10:30 local time on March 24, the plane transmitted signals to French ground air traffic while the air traffic control tower noticed that the plane was gradually losing altitude but the air traffic control tower could not contact the plane via radio. After that, the plane continued to lose altitude and crashed into the rocky mountainside.

Every commercial airliner is equipped with two black boxes. The one found on March 24 is a cockpit voice recorder, which records the last two hours of audio on the plane, including conversations between pilots and announcements heard by the crew.

The first black box was found because it was still emitting signals at that time. The shell of the second black box was also found but the electronic chip that recorded the data has not been found yet.

To extract the data, the black box is analyzed in a specialized laboratory. First, experts will have to remove the parts to access the electronic chips inside. This is a very meticulous stage so as not to affect the data.

These details are then fed into a special reader and decoded. This step only captures the raw signals. The data is then analyzed by a team of experts, including at least one person from the Center for Aviation Safety Investigation and Analysis in charge of the incident, a representative of the airline and one from the aircraft manufacturer, Airbus.

The time to analyze and decode the black box can be extended depending on the condition of the black box, from as little as 48 hours to even weeks. In the case of the March 24 crash, the recovered black box was damaged, so the analysis process is likely to take longer.

Capturing cockpit conversations between the crew could help explain why the A320-211 suddenly lost altitude, why the crew suddenly lost contact with air traffic control while it was flying over the Alps on its routine route from Barcelona to Dusseldorf, and why the crew had no contact with the ground for eight minutes before the tragedy.

Normally, if the black box of an airplane can be exploited and decoded, people can clarify about 90% of the causes of the accident./.

According to VNA