Jumbo ‘black box’ doubts

Press, 1 July 1985, Page 10

Jumbo ‘black box’ doubts

NZPA-AP Cork The Irish Government said yesterday that it was now doubtful that the "black box” flight recorders had been located at the crash site of an Air-India jumbo jet. It was reported earlier that a Royal navy ship had located the recorder. Joe Jennings, director of the Irish Government’s information service, had said in Cork that the authorities had secured a tentative fix on the two black box recorders in water about 1800 metres deep. “Now that’s doubtful,” said an Irish Government information- service spokeswoman, Kate O’Toole. In London Britain’s Defence Ministry maintained

that the Irish had been over-hasty in concluding that faint, intermittent signals picked up by a British naval sea-bed operations vessel, H.M.S. Challenger, had come from the recorders.

Miss O’Toole said that a British civilian survey vessel, the Gardline Locator, chartered by Indian aviation authorities, was in the crash area “and now the signals are not coming through as strongly. The location is now doubtful.” The Irish navy vessel, Aoife, towing a sophisticated Canadian deep-sea listening device called a hydrophone, had left yesterday from Cork for the search area, 195 km southwest of Ireland, Miss O’Toole said.