ICAO seeks to appoint external observer in Air India crash
This is unprecedented as till now ICAO has appointed observers in instances where the crash site was in a conflict zone or a civilian aircraft was shot down by military forces.
People aware of the development said last week Juan Carlos Salazar Gómez, secretary general of Montreal-based ICAO wrote to India's civil aviation secretary Samir Kumar Sinha expressing interest to become a part of the probe.
They said that India is yet to take a call on ICAO's proposal.
The secretary general of ICAO said that since this was a large-scale accident and involves citizens of other nationalities, an external observer by ICAO will ensure that all international protocols and best practices are being met. This, will reinforce the credibility of the investigation process, he said in the letter.
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53 British nationals have died in the crash prompting the United Kingdom's accident investigator become a part of the case while USA's National Transport Safety Board (NTSB) is assisting as both the aircraft and engine manufacturer Boeing and GE are US companies.
In recent times, ICAO has appointed technical staff in the investigation of PS-572 crash Ukrainian International Airlines flight which was shot by Iranian Republican Guards on its way from Tehran to Kiev. The other instance was MH 17 which was shot down by Russian-backed forces with a surface-to-air missile.
'This is not identical to the Ahmedabad crash as in both these cases, the area was war torn hampering accident investigation process and it was a military action going rogue killing civilians,' an Indian government official said adding that a call to accept ICAO's proposal was yet to be made.
The government on Thursday said that the
Aircraft Accident Investigation Bureau
(AAIB) has successfully extracted data from the cockpit voice recorder (CVR) and flight data recorder (FDR) of the aircraft.
The civil aviation ministry said the memory module of the front black box was accessed and downloaded on Wednesday in a lab at Delhi in presence of NTSB investigators.
India is yet to appoint a lead investigator to probe the accident.
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