Vietnam Coast Guard Commander Major General Nguyen Quang Dam has said that search teams were determined to locate the black box recorder of missing aircraft CASA 212 on Wednesday.

He said search teams had narrowed down the location where the CASA 212 went down with nine military personnel aboard last Thursday, placing it near the delimitation line in the Tonkin Gulf.

At about 10.30am Wednesday, wreckage from the aircraft was fished out of the sea but search teams had not yet found its black box.

“The aircraft is at a depth of some 60m, and weather conditions are quite good for the search party,” Dam said, adding that divers and robots had been mobilised to approach the object suspected to be the airplane’s black box.

Deputy Minister of Transport Nguyen Nhat said that Airbus, the maker of the CASA 212, had offered technical assistance to identify the cause of the accident.

Airbus suggested taking data retrieved from the black box and cabin sound recorder to its centre in Madrid for analysis.

 They expect to reconstruct the incident under the supervision of Vietnam’s Ministry of National Defense to determine its cause.

Nhat said the Transport Ministry co-operated closely with other forces under the direction of the National Committee for Search and Rescue during searches for missing aircraft and people.

The ministry had asked the relevant agencies to prepare plans for fishing out such aircraft as soon as they were located.

The CASA-212-40 went missing on June 16 during a search operation for a Su-30MK2, which had crashed offshore near the central province of Nghe An last Tuesday.

One of the two pilots on the Su30 MK2, Major Nguyen Huu Cuong, was rescued, but the other, Lieutenant Colonel Tran Quang Khai, 43, was found dead at sea last Friday and was brought ashore.

The CASA 212 turboprop plane is thought to have fallen into Hai Phong Sea, some 44 nautical miles from Bach Long Vi Island. The military personnel on board are still missing.

VNS