Caught up in translation

Kerala team which was to open aircraft remains held up for two hours; did not know Kannada and couldn't tell cops why they had heavy equipment

Kerala team which was to open aircraft remains held up for two hours; did not know Kannada and couldn't tell cops why they had heavy equipment

Language proved to be a barrier during operations to cut open the mangled remains of the aircraft to locate the black box yesterday.



On their way to the crash site, M Jose (32) and three others, who were to work under him, were held up at a check-point as they were unable to explain to policemen why they were carrying the equipment.

The men, who could not converse in Kannada -- the local language -- were held up for a couple of hours as they could also not explain why they did not have documents for the vehicle in which they were driving.

The team was to cut open the aircraft's fuselage to recover the black box of the plane that crashed at Mangalore Airport on Saturday.



"It was two hours before we could get them out of trouble," said Satya D'Silva, a policeman at the crash site.

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Black box located?
Confirming to MiD DAY that the black box had been recovered around noon yesterday, an official source said the confirmation would take time due to the "sensitive nature" of the matter. DGCA director A K Chopra, however, refused to confirm this. "The search for the black box has been called off for the day. It will resume at 6 am on Monday," said Chopra. "The Cockpit Voice Recorder has been found."

The Directorate General of Civil Aviation (DGCA) had requisitioned the team from its Thiruvananthapuram office.

Playing interpreter between Jose and MiD DAY, D'Silva said, "We [Jose and his team] kept telling the policemen at the check point that it was imperative that we reached Mangalore quickly."

However, due to miscommunication, it took a couple of hours before the four-member team was bailed out.

The group's task was to manoeuvre through the blackened mass of aircraft cables and twisted metal to locate the blackbox. They were to carry out this task in coordination with the operator of an excavator at the crash site.

"As the excavator was ripping open the cockpit's roof, it knocked down the burnt stump of a palm tree nearby. It rolled down the hill slope and fell on the debris at the site," Jose said.u00a0u00a0

Did you know?
Nine of 11 airplanes that crashed in the last decade in India belonged to government airlines

105, number of men who died in the Mangalore crashu00a0
32, Number of women who lost their lives
4, Infants who died in the Air India flight that crashed on Saturdayu00a0
19, Number of children who diedu00a0

What is a black box?

Usually painted bright u00a0orange to help easy retrieval,u00a0 it is so called because of u00a0the tragic circumstances u00a0in which it is generally u00a0retrieved. Black box is actually a loose term used u00a0for two crucial pieces of equipment -- the Cockpit Voice Recorder and the Digital flight data recorder. One device digitally records u00a0all conversations inside the cockpit and those with the u00a0air traffic controllers, among u00a0its other uses, and gives vital clues to the cause of any air disaster. The other has the history of the aircraft's flight details, such as acceleration, engine thrust, airspeed, altitude, rudder position, which are vital in crash probes.