Aviation

16.5, Black sea crash investigation

Russia: searchers recovered the second flight recorder from an Armavia Airbus A- 320-211 (EK32009) aircraft that crashed into the Black Sea three weeks earlier, killing all 113 people aboard. The flight data recorder was lifted by a diving apparatus from a depth of about 1,640 ft after it was separated from a thick layer of silt. The blackbox was discovered within 16 m from the spot where workers found the air-craft’s cockpit voice recorder. Prosecutors almost immediately dismissed the possibility that terrorists had brought the plane down, and officials point to rough weather or pilot error as the likely cause. Armavia officials suggested, however, that air traffic controllers were at least partly to blame.