Two Mass. men say they have found long-lost ‘black boxes’ in Bolivia
Source: Boston Globe
By Astead W. Herndon Globe Staff June 06, 2016
For two Massachusetts men, what began as a fascination with missing planes and their data recorders a year ago ended with a trip to Bolivia, a potentially ground-breaking discovery, and a flash of Internet fame.
About a year ago, while he researched the vanished 2014 Malaysian Airlines Flight 370, Somerville resident Dan Futrell learned something. Since 1965, crash investigators have failed to recover flight data and cockpit voice recorders — often referred to as “black boxes” — from almost 20 crashed aircraft, including both planes that crashed into the New York City’s Twin Towers on Sept. 11, 2001.
But it was another flight that caught Futrell’s eye: Eastern Air Lines Flight 980, which took off from Paraguay for Miami in 1985 but crashed on Mount Illimani in western Bolivia. Crash investigators have long suspected that the plane’s debris landed in a spot that was nearly inaccessible.
Challenge accepted, Futrell said in his blog. ... “How is it that there is a place on this Earth that we can’t reach?” Futrell wrote in amazement.
....
Astead W. Herndon can be reached at astead.herndon@globe.com. Follow him on Twitter @AsteadWH.
Read more: http://www.bostonglobe.com/metro/2016/06/05/two-massachusetts-men-say-they-have-found-long-lost-black-boxes-bolivia/KEDOi2YEOnsMSYfTK7alGO/story.html
31 years later, we found the flight recorders
Eastern Air Lines Flight 980
In October 1985, the U.S. National Transportation Safety Board (NTSB) selected Greg Feith, an air safety investigator, to lead a team of U.S. investigators and Bolivian mountain guides to conduct an on-site examination of the wreckage of Flight 980, which had come to rest at approximately 6,126 metres (20,098 ft). ... To date, this remains the highest controlled flight into terrain (CFIT) commercial aviation accident site in history.
Discovery of the wreckage
In 2006, climbers on Mount Illimani found wreckage of the plane which had been revealed by melting ice. No bodies were found, though various personal effects of the passengers were recovered. Local climbers believed it was only a matter of time before bodies, the flight data recorder and cockpit voice recorder emerged from the ice.
In June 2016, Dan Futrell of Operation Thonapa claimed to have located pieces of the airliner's flight recorders.
Discovery of the flight recorder
On June 4, 2016, the cockpit voice recorder and many smashed parts of the plane's "black box" were recovered by a team of two in the Andes mountains. The box was in several pieces and is unlikely to contain much, if any, recoverable data from the crash 31 years prior. Dan Futrell and Isaac Stoner of Operation Thonapa recovered six large metal segments and several damaged pieces of magnetic tape.
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