Posted on 06/23/2002 12:50:38 PM PDT by Asmodeus
TAIPEI, Taiwan (AP) - Initial analysis of a black box from a China Airlines jet has yielded no clues in the crash last month that killed 225 people but has shown several unusual sounds, the chief investigator said Sunday.
Minutes before the Boeing 747-200 went down, the cockpit voice recorder picked up a noise that sounded like a human heart beat. But investigators have yet to identify the source of the noise, said Kay Yong, the chief investigator at Taiwan's Aviation Safety Council.
Shortly before the crash, the black box also recorded a noise that sounded like "ka ta, ka ta, ka ta," Yong said. The last noise was a sharp "thud" before the power went off, he said.
Several Boeing 747 pilots who listened to the tape said the sounds were not normal in the cockpit, Yong said.
Each sound lasts a fraction of a second. Investigators could not say if they were related to the crash, "but at this moment, we'd rather be more suspicious," Yong said.
A closer and more sophisticated analysis was needed to identify the noises, he said.
The second black box, the flight data recorder, was still being analyzed, and Yong would not comment on its contents.
Yong repeated on Sunday that the pilots' conversations did not indicate any problems.
He refused to speculate about why the plane crashed on May 25 about 20 minutes after taking off from Taiwan enroute for Hong Kong. But divers searching for the wreckage deep under the sea did not "find anything that did not belong to the airplane."
Search crews are still trying to recover large parts of the plane, which split into four pieces before plunging into the Taiwan Strait near the Penghu island chain off Taiwan's western coast. The wreckage might offer the best clues about why the plane crashed.
Some aviation experts have suggested that metal fatigue might have caused the 22-year-old plane to break up. Others have suggested that an explosion perhaps in the fuel tank was to blame. Security officials have said there were no signs of terrorism or a missile attack.
Rescue teams have so far recovered 160 bodies. Eight corpses including that of co-pilot Hsieh Ya-hsiung were found Saturday in wreckage about 200 feet under the sea.
The United Daily News quoted prosecutors as saying Hsieh's body was attached to the seat when it was found, indicating there had been no problem requiring him to get up immediately before the crash.
HELLO! McFly!!!
Could you imagine Shop & Go having to anaylize data from black box and having only a "thud" to go on in tracking down who held up the store. Gee, was that thud the door closing, the perp pounding his fist on the counter or the bulk head failing.
As a former military jet engine mechanic, I can honestly tell you that mechanical failures do not never ever occur.
Ok, I'll admit it, I was biting my tongue real hard when I typed that.
(It's *real* easy to tell when someone throws a bunch of material on a page instead of answering the question.)
See, some of us actually lived those 'events' ...
Taipei Times
[excerpt]one of the engines from the jet was retrieved yesterday morning by the search team. According to the Cabinet's Aviation Council, it was engine number one, one of the engines on the right side of the airliner. The engine was found near the wreckage of the front portion of the plane. The ASC said the search team would clean it before bringing it back to Penghu for inspection.
Looking further toward the front and further back it appears to me that the area that 'looks like a tarp' begins to blend in with the remainder of the forward section of the nose/fuselage section.
About that recovered #1 engine (outboard starboard side) - I wonder if it shows some signs of 'fodding' (similar to TWA 800's starboard side engines) ...
Walk into any convenience store or a gazillion other mom and pop shops and you can see exactly WHAT HAPPENED ..."... in very fuzzy detail ..."
Yeah, but, does that convenience store video tape contain any valuable telemetry data like the pulse or respiration rate - or the 'attitude and pitch' of the perp?
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