Pakistani officials said Saturday that they retrieved the flight-data recorder of the Airbus SE A320 jet that crashed into a residential neighborhood of Karachi, killing all but two people on board.
The search is still on for the voice recorder, said Abdul Sattar Khokhar, spokesman for the Civil Aviation Authority. The two recorders make up the so-called black box and store details of a plane's path as well as its mechanical systems and computers.
Analysis of the devices may give investigators clues why Flight PK 8303 decided to go around for a second approach. The pilot also reported losing power from both engines before the crash, which killed 97 travelers on board the state-run Pakistan International Airlines Corp. aircraft en route from the northern city of Lahore.
"There was fire everywhere, and everyone was screaming after the crash. I opened my seat belt and headed toward the light," Muhammad Zubair, a survivor who was sitting in the eighth row, said on a local television broadcast.
Pakistan has set up a four-member panel, which will report on the disaster in three months, Aviation Minister Ghulam Sarwar Khan said in a televised briefing Saturday.
The crash happened as the nation went into holidays to celebrate Eid al-Fitr, the annual Muslim festival. It also resulted in people getting injured on the ground as the plane plunged into a residential neighborhood, affecting 25 houses.
These houses have been cleared and their residents have been sheltered at various places, the Pakistan army's media wing, the Inter Services Public Relations, said in a Twitter update on rescue work.
Television footage showed cars and homes on fire in the neighborhood near the airport in the nation's commercial hub. The narrow-body jet entered service in 2004 and was operated by Pakistan International since 2014, Airbus said.
The pilots in Friday's crash reported losing power from both engines, according to a recording from LiveATC.net, which collects audio feeds from air-traffic controllers.
Airbus said it was providing technical assistance to France's Bureau d'Enquetes et d'Analyses and to Pakistani authorities in charge of the investigation. The company is working on getting a team to the crash site, according to a person familiar with the matter.
Engine manufacturer CFM International and the U.S. National Transportation Safety Board are monitoring the situation, representatives for both said. CFM is a joint venture of General Electric Co. and Safran SA.
A probe into the accident will be conducted soon, Prime Minister Imran Khan said on Twitter.
Information for this article was contributed by Khalid Qayum, Madeeha Khalid, Charlotte Ryan, Rajesh Kumar Singh, Siddharth Vikram Philip, Alan Levin, Ryan Beene, Ros Krasny and Brendan Case of Bloomberg News.
A Section on 05/24/2020