Foreign experts recover missing cockpit voice recorder of crashed PIA plane

The domestic flight from Lahore to Karachi crashed in a residential area near the Jinnah International Airport last Friday, killing 97 people on board. Two passengers miraculously survived the crash. The Airbus A320 aircraft of the national carrier had 91 passengers and a crew of eight when it crashed into the Jinnah Garden area near Model Colony in Malir, minutes before its landing.

Karachi:A team of foreign experts on Thursday recovered the missing cockpit voice recorder from the debris of the crashed Pakistan International Airlines plane, nearly a week after one of the worst aviation disasters in the country's history.

The preliminary investigation report on plane crash will be presented before parliament on June 22, the country's aviation minister Ghulam Sarwar Khan said after Prime Minister Imran Khan expressed anger over the delay in the probe.

The domestic flight from Lahore to Karachi crashed in a residential area near the Jinnah International Airport last Friday, killing 97 people on board. Two passengers miraculously survived the crash.

The Airbus A320 aircraft of the national carrier had 91 passengers and a crew of eight when it crashed into the Jinnah Garden area near Model Colony in Malir on Friday, minutes before its landing. Eleven people on the ground were also injured.

An 11-member team of foreign experts, which includes Airbus company representatives, visited the crash site and the runaway again on Thursday and found the cockpit voice recorder, which is an important piece of evidence in the investigations.

Read |Technical experts from France reach Pakistan to assist in PIA crash probe

A cockpit voice recorder is a device used to record the audio environment in the flight deck for accidents and incident investigation purposes.

It records and stores the audio signals of the microphones and earphones of the pilots' headsets and an area microphone installed in the cockpit.

The investigation team inspected the debris of the aircraft for around five hours on Thursday and found the voice recorder, a PIA spokesman said.

Earlier, the flight data recorder of the plane was recovered.

Read |Turbulence, warnings before Pakistan plane crash killed 97

"The voice recorder has been taken into possession by the aircraft accident investigation team today, he said.

The investigation team, which reached Karachi on May 26, was to return after two days. As the team could not trace some key evidence required for the probe, they extended their stay.

They will now return tomorrow, the spokesman said.

The team includes members from France, Germany, the UK and other countries.

(PTI)