The New Zealand Transport Accident Investigation Commission said on Tuesday it was confiscating the cockpit voice recorder and flight data recorder from a LATAM Airlines Boeing 787 following an incident that left more than 50 people injured.
The airline and passengers aboard the Sydney-Auckland flight said Monday that the plane, with 263 passengers and nine crew members on board, experienced a sharp descent into the air. Brian Adam Jokat, a Canadian citizen living in the United Kingdom who was traveling on the plane, said on Tuesday: "I was falling asleep, sitting by the window in a row of three seats, and with the jolt I opened my eyes and saw my companion on the plane. corridor on the roof of the plane, which was falling (...) I thought I was dreaming."
Photos taken by Jokat after the accident showed damage to the roof of the plane, where, he said, other passengers had been hit. "The whole plane froze," another passenger described to New Zealand media.
The New Zealand accident investigator said Chilean authorities had confirmed to him that they had opened an investigation into the flight, and that he was cooperating in their investigations. A TAIC spokesperson stated that, given that the incident had occurred in international airspace, it was up to the Chilean General Directorate of Civil Aeronautics (DGAC) to open an investigation.
LATAM is based in Chile and the flight was to continue to Santiago after stopping in Auckland. "TAIC is in the process of gathering evidence relevant to the investigation, including the seizure of cockpit voice and flight data recorders," the New Zealand agency said, referring to the so-called black boxes that will provide more information about the trajectory of the flight and communications between pilots. The DGAC said in a statement that it was working with the TAIC on the investigation.
LATAM did not immediately respond to a request for comment on whether it had handed over the black boxes to TAIC. The airline said earlier Tuesday that it would assist relevant authorities in any investigation into the "strong shaking" during the flight.
The cause of the apparent sudden change in flight path is unexplained at this time. Safety experts say that most plane crashes are due to a cocktail of factors that must be thoroughly investigated. The New Zealand Civil Aviation Authority said in a statement that it would also assist in the investigation if necessary. Debate over the length of cockpit recordings has been reignited in the aviation industry since it was revealed that data from the voice recorder of the Alaska Airlines Boeing 737 MAX 9 that lost a panel mid-flight in January was overwritten. .
Latam's Boeing 787 plane had 263 passengers on board and 9 crew members when it landed on Monday at 4:26 p.m. local time (04:26 gmt) at Auckland Airport after the plane suddenly fell in mid-flight. The incident injured about 50 people, one of whom was in "serious" condition and the rest with "moderate" or "slight" injuries.
According to the Flightradar website, the plane plummeted about 100 meters when it had covered about two-thirds of its route, suddenly falling from an altitude of 41,000 feet to about 40,692.
Flight L800 between Sydney and Santiago de Chile with a stopover in Auckland is very popular among the tens of thousands of Latin American immigrants traveling to their countries of origin.
