The black box of the ill-fated Air India Express plane that crashed at Karipur International Airport in Kozhikode has been recovered and will be taken to Delhi for further investigation by the Aircraft Accident Investigation Bureau (AAIB), said an official of aviation regulator DGCA on Saturday.
The digital flight data recorder (DFDR) and the cockpit voice recorder (CVR) jointly make up the "black box" in an aircraft.
The Air India Express flight from Dubai with 190 onboard overshot the tabletop runway at Kozhikode airport on Friday night while landing in heavy rain and fell into a valley 35 feet below and broke into two, killing at least 18 people.
The DFDR keeps a record of data from plane's systems like airspeed, altitude and fuel flow. A good quality DFDR can store up to 25 hours of flight data. The CVR keeps a recording of all the conversations taking place in a plane's cockpit. A good quality CVR can store up to two hours of voice data.
Once recovered after the aircraft crash, the black box gives ample flight data and voice recording to the investigators to find out what led to the accident.
"The DFDR and CVR, which have been recovered from the plane, will help in finding the cause of this accident," the official of the Directorate General of Civil Aviation (DGCA) said.
These devices are with the AAIB and will be sent to Delhi for further investigation, according to the official.
A tabletop runway is located on top of a hill or a plateau with one or both the ends overlooking a gorge. The Kozhikode airport in Kerala has a table-top runway and is operated by the Airports Authority of India (AAI).
An AAI spokesperson said runway 28 of the airport was in use and in the first landing attempt, the pilot could not sight the runway and requested for runway 10.
Citing information from the Air Traffic Controller (ATC), the spokesperson said the aircraft touched down near taxiway 'C', which is approximately 1,000 metres from the beginning of runway 10. The total length of the runway is 2,700 metres.
The spokesperson also said the reported visibility due to rains at the time of landing was 2,000 metres.
Aviation consultancy firm CAPA said on Twitter the DGCA and the AAIB must conduct thorough probes into the Kozhikode tragedy, and follow through on actions to achieve a systemic overhaul of aviation safety in India, especially at airports with tabletop runways.