Black boxes found after Toronto airplane crash

By Rachelle Younglai

TORONTO (Reuters) – Investigators recovered the black box
flight recorders on Wednesday from the Air France plane that
crashed and burned in a violent Toronto thunderstorm but — in
what officials called a miracle — took no lives.

All 309 passengers and crew survived after the Airbus A340
overshot the runway and burst into flames as it landed in
extreme weather conditions at Toronto’s Pearson International
Airport on Tuesday.

A tour of the site showed the plane had been reduced to a
burned-out carcass, with pieces of wing and a gleaming, white
nose still visible among the wreckage. Skid marks in the grass
led to where the aircraft came to a final stop and at least a
dozen searchers were sifting through the wreckage.

The flight data and cockpit voice recorders with important
data about the aircraft’s final moments were found with some
fire damage but in good condition and were being decoded at a
laboratory, Canada’s Transportation Safety Board said.

“Extreme weather conditions are one factor that (the
investigators) will be considering, but they have access to a
great deal of other information that will be relevant to their
work,” said Canadian Transport Minister Jean Lapierre.

“We have been extremely lucky to not have had a single loss
of life in that accident.” he added.

Lapierre said he had initially been told 200 people had
died in the crash. “It’s a miracle,” he said.

Some 42 people were taken to the hospital with minor
injuries, most of them sustained as they fled the burning plane
down emergency chutes. Air France said 14 were still in
hospital by Wednesday afternoon.

Passengers reported seeing flames outside the plane and
smoke inside it, and one said there had been a textbook
evacuation by the Air France cabin crew.

“I’m glad to be alive,” passenger Johnny Abedrabbo told
Reuters. “It’s an amazing feeling to be alive and see that
everyone on the plane made it.”

The airline said 101 French citizens and 104 Canadians were
aboard the plane, as well as people from Britain, Italy, India
and the United States.

Officials also praised the Air France crew, whose first
officer made a final check round the plane before abandoning
it. “Everybody got off. That’s the bottom line. A plane burns,
we can put it out,” said Mike Figliola, the airport authority’s
fire chief.

COMBINATION OF CAUSES POSSIBLE

Safety officials said the weather was one of a number of
“potential aspects” under investigation and police said there
was no indication the crash was anything other than an
accident.

“Accidents seldom happen because of one cause. …
Generally an accident is caused by a number of things,” Real
Levasseur, the Transportation Safety Board’s lead investigator
in the case, told reporters as he downplayed suggestions the
plane was disabled by a lightning strike as it landed.

Investigators will look at whether there were mechanical
problems and natural factors such as a wet runway that could
have caused aquaplaning, or if a sudden tail wind could have
blown the plane toward the end of the runway.

Pearson airport, Canada’s biggest and busiest, was slowly
getting back to normal. But there were long delays, which
affected flights across Canada.

Air France said the Airbus plane had 28,418 flight hours in
more than 3,700 flights and had joined its fleet in September
1999 — making it a relative newcomer compared with the large
number of far older planes still flying. It was last serviced
on July 5.

Air France said the plane had no technical problems when it
left France, and the engines performed normally — kicking into
reverse — after the aircraft landed. The captain and co-pilot
were very experienced, with more than 25,000 flight hours
combined, and the co-pilot was at the controls during landing.

The A340-300 has a range of more than 7,000 miles, which
makes it popular with more than two dozen carriers for
long-haul flights. It was the first in-flight crash involving
an A340, Canadian officials said.

(Additional reporting by David Ljunggren, Paul Carrel,
Allan Dowd and John Crawley)