Daily Star/’withAP’, Lebanon
February 9, 2010
Patrick Galey
Relatives Protest over how Cabinet handled incident
BEIRUT: The flight recorders from the Ethiopian Airlines plane which crashed off the coast of Beirut were transported Monday to France, where investigators hope to unlock the secret of what caused the disaster.
A team of specialists left Rafik Hariri International Airport at dawn with the black boxes on Prime Minister Saad Hariri’s private plane, the National News Agency reported.
The team included General Director of Civil Aviation Hamdi Chawk and Boeing representative Dennis Jones, it added.
Lebanese naval commandoes located the two flight recorders from the Boeing 737-800 offshore from Naameh, south of Beirut, on Sunday. They were at a depth of 45 meters and contained within a fragment of the plane’s fuselage, according to Transport and Public Works Minister Ghazi Aridi.
“[Investigators] are working on coming up with a report and all the people from the committee are in France,” Aridi told The Daily Star on Monday.
“When we find the second flight recorders they will also be sent to France.”
Aridi said there was no time scale on the investigation.
“There are many problems and we are busy with many things, including [identifying] expatriates. We are still looking for the second [flight recorders] and awaiting the results of the investigations, but it will take time,” he said.
Flight ET409 plunged into the sea minutes after taking off from Beirut’s Rafik Hariri International Airport airport amid a violent thunderstorm on January 25, with 83 passengers and seven crew members on board. No survivors have been found.
On Sunday, eight further bodies were pulled from the eastern Mediterranean taking to 23 the total number retrieved from the crash. Several are still unidentified.
Security sources told The Daily Star that the individuals recovered were seated at the back of the plane and would take several days to identify. Many bodies were not intact when retrieved, the sources added.
Public criticism of the government’s handling of the crash aftermath continued to swell Monday, with protests by relatives of Ethiopian victims outside Rafik Hariri University Hospital in Beirut and by four families of Lebanese victims in the southern village of Kfar Jawz objecting to the slow pace of clear up operations.
Hizbullah’s politburo head Ibrahim Amin al-Sayyed, called on Lebanese authorities to openly publish information gathered so far on the plane crash “so as to preserve Lebanon’s reputation.”
Information Minister Tarek Mitri, speaking to reporters following a ministerial meeting on the progress of investigations, defended the government’s response to the disaster.
“It is time for Lebanon to take measures so it can face disasters in a better way,” he said. The general consensus in the meeting was that the government departments from the first day have conducted themselves seriously and professionally.
“They showed extraordinary abilities.”
Mitri added that the search for the additional plane fragments was continuing.
“We will not close the file, a search is ongoing and an investigation will start now that we have found the black boxes. No decision has been taken to put an end to searches,” he said. Search operations will be pursued with the same seriousness and motivation as they have been so far.”
Mitri also announced two further ministerial meetings, scheduled this week, to discuss the disaster’s aftermath and said a committee was being considered to better prepare Lebanon for similar incidents in the future.
“One of the first lessons is to establish a committee tasked with coordinating between all concerned authorities that will deal quickly and effectively with events [such as this] that we hope will not be repeated,” he added.
Mitri refused to put a timescale on investigations, saying only “we will not know [the outcome] tomorrow.”
Bad weather is thought to be the most likely cause of the crash, with Lebanese and Ethiopian officials ruling out sabotage. The plane had passed a maintenance check on December 25 when no faults were found.
The retrieval of flight recorders represents a major breakthrough in the search and recovery operation which has been under way since the crash. The crucial cockpit flight recorders that may contain voice recordings of the pilot in the seconds before the plane disappeared off radar screens for good continue to elude salvage crews.
Search conditions have been described as “difficult and complicated” by officials and the main body of the plane will remain on the seabed at a depth of 1,500 meters until submarines drafted from international recovery teams can reach it.
The investigation is being conducted by a team of Lebanese technicians, supported by the Bureau d’Enquetes et d’Analyses, Frances accident investigation agency. The final report will be presented to Lebanese and Ethiopian officials, as well as the plane manufacturer Boeing.
Also on Monday, it was announced that a Mass to honor the memory of victims of flight ET409 will be read by Beirut Archbishop Boulos Matar in downtown Beirut on Thursday.
