LONDON--The first of two black boxes from Malaysia Airlines
Flight 17 was successfully downloaded Wednesday with work on the
other device due to take place Thursday, the Dutch Air Safety Board
said.
The two devices that store data from the aircraft and record
conversations in the cockpit arrived Wednesday in the U.K. for
analysis by the British Air Accidents Investigation Branch at
Farnborough, England. The AAIB is gathering data for the Dutch-led
probe into the crash of the Boeing 777 on July 17 that killed all
298 people onboard.
"The Cockpit Voice Recorder data was successfully downloaded and
contained valid data from the flight," the Dutch agency said in a
statement. The device was damaged, though the critical memory
module was intact with no evidence it was tampered with, it
said.
"The downloaded data have to be further analyzed and
investigated," the group said.
Work on the flight data recorder will take place Thursday. If
that information can be extracted the data from both recorders will
be combined to gain a fuller understanding of what happened in the
shoot-down of the plane while cruising at 33,000 feet above eastern
Ukraine.
Analyzing the data isn't expected to help officials determine
who shot down the jetliner, though it could rule out any technical
failure leading to the accident.
The Dutch Safety Board said earlier Wednesday it could take
several weeks to fully complete the data analysis.
Air accident investigators have failed to inspect debris at the
crash site because of uncertainty about the security situation
there.
Write to Robert Wall at robert.wall@wsj.com
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