ATO suspects LIA switched off black box

The Air Transportation Office (ATO) expressed suspicion yesterday that the "black box" of the crashed Laoag International Airlines (LIA) Flight 585 may have been "deliberately" switched off so that the goings-on in the ill-fated Fokker-27 would not be recorded.

"Somebody must have tinkered with the black boxes," said ATO chief Adelberto Yap. "I don’t know what they are up to but it seems they don’t want the goings-on in the cockpit recorded."

Yap made the remark after a fact-finding team of the Department of Transportation and Communications (DOTC) revealed on Tuesday that the United States National Transportation Safety Board (NTSB) discovered that the plane’s flight data recorder (FDR) was blank.

"The black box is found under the wheel. It could not be easily reached unless you wanted to," he said.

Yap also described as "crazy" the claim of LIA assistant vice president Alvin Yater that the FDR and the cockpit voice recorder (CVR), collectively known as the plane’s black box, were "not an instrument vital or relevant to the safe flight of an aircraft."

"(The black box is) among the ‘no-go’ items. This means (that) if a black box is not working, a plane should not be flown," Yap said, noting that the NTSB found that Flight 585’s black box had not been working for "quite some time."

According to Yap, the ATO inspects the black box of an aircraft annually when their registrations are up for renewal but he could not ascertain when the black box of the crashed Fokker-27, which was acquired by the airline in September 2001, was last inspected.

"We have only up to a certain extent to monitor all aircraft. Our personnel is limited and there are around 1,200 local airplanes," he added.

Flight 585 crashed in Manila Bay on Nov. 11, killing 19 of the 34 passengers and crew on board.

DOTC Undersecretary Arturo Valdez said the fact-finding team looking into the crash is about to wrap up its investigation even as it looks into other issues related to the crash.

One of the issues was why Flight 585’s main fuel switch was in shut-off position when probers checked the aircraft.

Valdez explained the shut-off position means there was no fuel supply to the main engine from the main tank. This apparently caused the engines of the Fokker plane to stop, minutes after it took off.

He said the DOTC panel also observed poor supervision and maintenance from the LIA management.

The airline said they are now finalizing the compensation package for the fatalities and the survivors. Yater said talks between LIA’s legal department and its Australian insurer, Heath Lamber, on the compensation package are now being finalized.

Yater stressed that LIA has "not abandoned any of our basic moral and financial responsibility, adding that the amount of the final compensation and financial settlement with the victims and survivors will be determined by LIA lawyers in consultation with Heath Lamber.