TAM Plane Crash News: Black Box Mistaken, 217 Bodies Found, 47 Victims Identified

Filed in archive Latin Issues on July 21, 2007

O Brasil está de luto - Brazil is mourning

One of the two black boxes recovered by the Aeronautics from the wreckage of the Tam Airlines Airbus 320 was in fact a piece of the airplane's fuselage, said a note divulged by the Brazilian Air Force. No, I'm not making this up.

The National Transportation Safety Board (NTSB), the US agency responsible for flight security, which will analyze the content of the boxes, received two supposed black boxes. Tests had shown that one of them was not a recording voice equipment.

The actual second black box was found last night by the firemen, and was shipped to the United States today.

The Aeronautics have justified the mistake affirming that it occurred due to the deformation the material suffered during the accident. My only question is: have you ever heard of such a mistake before, on any other plane crash?

The Firemen Department's chief, Colonel Manuel Antônio da Silva Araújo, said this afternoon that he believes that all the bodies have been already removed from the debris of the TAM Express building, reached by the Tam Airlines Airbus 320 last Tuesday. But the Security Office guaranteed that the searches continue, and the possibility of new victims being found is not discarded.

Until the end of this afternoon, the Body of Firemen had removed 217 bodies from the place of the tragedy. The Legal Medical Institute (IML) have identified only 47 of them.

So far, there were 217 victims, not 200 as expected. And we don't know yet, beyond doubt, if there aren't more bodies to be found. Brazil is mourning.

Source (Portuguese): Terra