Cause Of Airliner Disaster Sought

Press, Volume CVII, Issue 31500, 14 October 1967, Page 13

Cause Of Airliner Disaster Sought

(N.Z.P.A.-Reuter—Copyright)

ATHENS, October 13.

Post-mortem examinations of the victims of yesterday’s British European Airways Cornet disaster may help to establish the- cause of the crash, which killed all 66 aboard.

The plane, on the last leg of a flight from London to Nicosia, crashed into the Mediterranean between the Turkish coast and the island of Kastellorizon yesterday morning.

Debris from the jet was strewn over some 10 square miles of sea. Aircraft and ships of many nations scouring the choppy seas for possible survivors had picked up at least 60 bodies by nightfall and it was officially announced that all 59 passengers and seven cyew had perished.

The Greek destroyer Navarino, with 26 bodies aboard, and the 1194-ton Hungarian freighter Balaton with 19, were making for the island of Rhodes, where doctors are standing by to carry out immediate autopsies.

Other bodies were being taken by one of the Turkish rescue vessels to the small mainland port of Finike and will be transferred later to Rhodes.

A team of experts flown out by B.E.A. to investigate the crash will work from Kastellorizon.

One of their first jobs will

be to try to find the “black box" automatic flight recorder which went down with the wreckage. The recorder Is built to withstand submersion and, if recovered, will yield vital details of the last minutes of the doomed plane. But in view of the great depth of water in the area there is only a slight hope of finding the box.

The crash baffled experts, for the plane was cruising normally at about 29,000 ft and there was no indication from the pilot that the plane was in difficulties.