Philippines retrieves black boxes from crashed plane

Site of the plane crash. (AFP)

Philippine authorities have retrieved both the flight data and cockpit voice recorders from an air force plane that crashed at the weekend killing more than 50 people, the military chief said yesterday. The pilot in command, who had several years of experience flying a C-130 aircraft, was among those who died in the crash on Jolo island, Cirilito Sobejana said by telephone. He said the black boxes should enable investigators to listen to the conversations of the pilots and crew before the plane crashed. “I spoke to the survivors and they said the plane bounced two to three times and zig-zagged. The pilot tried to regain power because he wanted to lift the plane but it was too late. The right wing hit a tree,” he said. Sobejana said no one jumped from the aircraft before it crashed. There were earlier witness accounts that some passengers had tried to leap to safety. He said the front of the aircraft was sliced open and some of the soldiers took advantage of the opening to escape. Others were unconscious when the plane burst into flames. The Lockheed C-130 transport aircraft was carrying troops bound for counter-insurgency operations in the south when it crashed with 96 aboard. The death toll in the country’s worst military air accident in nearly three decades had risen to 53, including three civilians on the ground, after one of the 47 injured soldiers succumbed on Monday night, Sobejana told reporters. Military spokesman Edgard Arevalo on Monday said the plane was in “very good condition” and had 11,000 flying hours remaining before its next maintenance was due. The cockpit voice and flight data recorders, which are known as black boxes, will be sent to the US for analysis, lieutenant general Corleto Vinluan, chief of the Western Mindanao Command.said. The CVR records flight crew conversations and the flight data recorder holds information about the speed, altitude and direction of the plane. They could explain what caused the C-130 to crash in sunny weather. “We will be able to hear from that black box what was the last conversation of the pilots and crew in the cockpit so we can ascertain the situation that really happened,” Sobejana told CNN Philippines. Photos of the scene released by the military showed the damaged tail and smoking wreckage scattered among trees. Dental records are being used to help in the painstaking effort to identify badly charred bodies.