Gulf crash team to study black boxes

Distraught relatives arrive to claim their dead

Air accident investigators in Bahrain are preparing to study the flight recorders from the Gulf Air plane which crashed into the sea on Wednesday, killing all 143 people on board.

Rescue teams have recovered both recorders - one containing cockpit conversations, the other flight data - as well as the bodies of all those who died on Flight GF072.

The black box analysis will begin after three experts from the US arrive in Bahrain on Friday to help with the inquiry into the crash of the Airbus 320.

Many relatives broke down as they arrived to identify the dead

A representative from the plane's maker, Airbus Industrie, has already arrived, along with French accident investigators.

Bahrain's Transport Minister, Sheik Ali bin Khalifa Al Khalifa, said he hoped information from the recorders would start solving the mystery of what brought the plane down.

"Any news, anything out of it would be a help," he said.

Gulf Air has said it is too soon to speculate on what caused the crash.

Officials say the pilot made no emergency call, although he appears to have circled the airport twice before making his ill-fated landing attempt.

Rescue teams have recovered bodies, black boxes and debris

"The pilot did not make any kind of statements of problems in the plane," said Ali Ahmedi, a spokesman for Gulf Air.

Grief-stricken families have been identifying their relatives from photographs shown to them as they gathered in the ballroom of a hotel in the capital, Manama.

Many had flown in to Cairo to undergo the ordeal of claiming their dead.

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"Some of (the bodies) have already been given to their families," said Abdel Rahman bin Rashid al-Khalifa, Bahrain's director of civil aviation.

Officials read out the names of those killed to the crowd of grieving relatives, some of whom fell to the floor wailing and screaming.

Passengers

63 Egyptians

34 Bahrainis

12 Saudis

Nine Palestinians

Six UAE citizens

Three Chinese

Two Britons

One American, Australian, Canadian, Kuwaiti, Omani, Sudanese

"This is the worst day of my life. I lost a part of me," said Khalifa al-Hashil, a Saudi national whose 35-year-old brother Mohammed was on the flight.

Most of the passengers were Egyptian, Bahraini or Saudi nationals returning to the Gulf island state after holidays abroad. Thirty-six of them were children.

The crew comprised two Bahrainis, an Omani, a Filipino, a Pole, an Indian, a Moroccan and an Egyptian.

The captain, who has not yet been named, had 21 years' experience.

Waters at the crash site are less than 10 metres (35 feet) deep, which helped in the speedy recovery of the bodies..

International emergency phone number for Gulf Air

0044 208 2839666

The Emir of Bahrain, Sheikh Hamad bin Isa al-Khalifa declared three days of mourning.

Ahmed Hassan, an eyewitness, told the BBC that the jet veered to avoid buildings before plunging into the sea.

"It U-turned and tried to land, then in 15 seconds it went sharply down into the sea and there was a huge fire," he said.

He said the jet fell "sharply, like an arrow".

The plane broke up after hitting the water

The plane had been delivered to Gulf Air in September 1994.

The A320 entered service in April 1988. Wednesday's crash is its sixth major disaster.

In the last fatal A320 crash, 87 people died when one of the jets came down near Strasbourg in eastern France in January 1992.

Gulf Air, which has a good safety record, is jointly owned by the Gulf states of Bahrain, Oman, Qatar and Abu Dhabi.

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