Investigators say the black box will be key to establishing what downed Malaysia Airlines flight MH17 over eastern Ukraine but the device is reportedly already on its way to Russia
A tug of war is under way for possession of doomed flight MH17’s “black box” recorder amid reports the device, which could provide the key to the crash investigation, has already been sent to Moscow.
Aviation experts said the black box, comprising cockpit voice and data recordings, would establish for certain whether the plane was shot down and where the deadly missile may have been fired from.
The data and voice recorders on Boeing 777s like the Malaysia Airlines one that crashed are among the most sophisticated in civilian use.
But as politicians including US President Barack Obama called for international investigators to be given unhindered access to the crash site it emerged it may already be too late for them to retrieve the device.
The news service Interfax reported that rebel Russian separatist forces in Ukraine had already found the black box and agreed to give it to a Russian-run regional air safety authority.
Andrei Purgin, the self-styled deputy prime minister of the separatist Donetsk People’s Republic, told Interfax: “Of course, we most likely will give them (the recorders) to the Interstate Aviation Committee, to Moscow.
High-level experts, who will be able to determine exactly the reason of the catastrophe, work there.”
Whoever has access to the black box will have control over the information from the last moments of the flight, and they could prevent impartial investigators from analysing it.
Russian radio station Kommersant FM also reported that the black box was on its way to Moscow.
The Prime Minister of Malaysia, Najib Razak, said: “An international team must have full access to the crash site. And no one should interfere with the area, or move any debris, including the black box.”
He said the Ukraine government had vowed to include a Malaysian team in the crash investigation, and that there would be negotiations with the separatists to establish a “humanitarian corridor to the crash site”.
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The Telegraph
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