'Black boxes' recovered in deadly air collision
November
13, 1996..................Web
posted at: 11:25 a.m. EST (1610 GMT)
CHARKHI DADRI, India (CNN) --
Investigators Wednesday pulled the last of four so-called
"black boxes" -- the flight data recorders and
cockpit voice recorders -- from the wreckage of an
in-flight collision over northern India that killed some
350 people. Officials hope information on the recorders
will help explain why a Saudi Arabia Airlines Boeing 747
and a Kazakhstan National Airways (KazakhAir) Ilyushin
IL-76 cargo plane collided Tuesday evening and plunged to
the ground in flames. "They look damaged, but we
expect the insides to be safe and secure," said
Indian Director of Air Safety V.K. Chandna. Chandna said
investigators also had taken recordings made in the
control tower of New Delhi's Indira Ghandi airport just
before the crash. The crash, the third deadliest in
aviation history, occurred seven minutes after the Saudi
jet took off. It scattered debris over a 6-mile area.
 Searchers have recovered more than 250
bodies, many mutilated and charred, from two crash sites
some 10 km (6 miles) apart on the north Indian plain west
of New Delhi. Relatives came to makeshift morgues to try
to identify family members. The U.S. Embassy in New Delhi
said two U.S. women were among the passengers aboard the
Saudi jumbo jet, and British officials confirmed that one
British woman was on board. More than 300 people, mostly
Indians traveling to Saudi Arabia for jobs or to Islamic
holy sites, were on the jet, along with some Nepalis and
Pakistanis. Rajiv Bhaskar, an official with KazAir, said
the passengers aboard the chartered cargo plane included
businessmen traveling from Kazakhstan to New Delhi to
purchase wool goods -- cheap in India -- for sale in
Kazakhstan.
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