The National Transportation Safety Board (NTSB) on 1st March announced it has recovered the cockpit voice recorder (CVR) from an Atlas Air Boeing 767-300 freighter six days after it crashed in Trinity Bay, Texas, killing three people on board.
In a posting on Twitter, the agency said it was transporting the CVR to its recorders laboratory in Washington DC, for examination. There was no mention of the aircraft’s flight data recorder.
Searchers have been hampered in recovering wreckage from the crash by the muddy bottom of the marshland where the aircraft went down, a part of Galveston Bay near the city of Anahuac, Texas.
Atlas Air flight 3591, a cargo flight being operated for Amazon Air, crashed in the water body Feb. 23 while on approach to Houston George Bush Intercontinental Airport. Eyewitness accounts and video posted online by news sites reveal the aircraft making a steep dive into the bay. The NTSB has said it is studying another video it received from the Chambers County Jail.
The Airline Professionals Association, Teamsters Local 1224, which represented crew members on the flight, on March 1 identified them as Capt. Ricky Blakely, First Officer Conrad Jules Aska and Mesa Airlines pilot Sean Archuleta, who reportedly was seated in the jump seat.
Phoenix-based Mesa Airlines operates flights as United Express. United Airlines issued a statement saying it was “saddened to learn that one of the three men who died in the accident, Mesa Airlines Capt. Sean Archuleta, who was jumpseating on the flight, had recently been hired here at United and planned to join us in March.”
The pilots union is participating in the crash investigation, which the NTSB leads. Other parties to the investigation are Atlas Air, Boeing, the National Air Traffic Controllers Association and GE Aviation, manufacturer of the aircraft’s CF6-80C2 engines.
Source:ATW
