ETHIOPIAN-AIRLINES BLACK-BOXES FOUND; WILL BE RETREIVED TOMORROW

OMAN OBSERVER:

Recovery teams yesterday sought to retrieve the black boxes of an Ethiopian aircraft that crashed off Lebanon’s coast, with hope the data would provide answers to the mystery surrounding the tragedy. “We expect to have them some time today,” Lebanese Transport Minister Ghazi Aridi said.

Search teams picked up the flight data recorder signals late on Wednesday but Aridi said it remained unclear whether the boxes were still inside the body of the Boeing 737-800, which plunged into the Mediterranean on Monday with 90 people on board. “If the black boxes are not in the body of the plane, it is easier to access them,” he said. “But if they are still inside the plane, the recovery will be more complicated.”

The boxes were located in a seafloor trench which makes access more difficult, a defence ministry official said on condition of anonymity.US navy destroyer the USS Ramage, part of an international search operation, picked up the signals approximately 10 kilometres west of Beirut airport at a depth of 4,265 feet below sea level, an army spokesman said also requesting anonymity.

The Ocean Alert, a civilian vessel stationed in Cyprus, was working to salvage the device, he said. The vessel is equipped to reach objects 6,561 feet below sea level. Ethiopian Airlines Flight 409, bound for Addis Ababa, crashed into the Mediterranean minutes after takeoff from Beirut at 2:37 am during a raging thunderstorm on Monday.

I BELIEVE THE BLACK BOXES WILL PROVE THAT THE JET DID NOT COME DOWN BECAUSE OF MAKING A WRONG TURN INTO BAD WEATHER, BUT WAS BLOWN UP.