Transport minister Loke Siew Fook said Singapore’s Transport Safety Investigation Bureau (TSIB) had successfully extracted the “memory puck” from the aircraft’s black box on Saturday.
“The memory puck has been removed from the black box and was found to be in good condition,” he said at the transport ministry’s monthly assembly here today.
Loke said the CVR was sent to a lab in Singapore yesterday to retrieve the last 30 minutes of the voice recording data.
He said the transport ministry’s Air Accident Investigation Bureau (AAIB) and the TSIB were unable to obtain the recording as Malaysia does not have the equipment to do so.
“We received an offer for technical assistance from the Singaporean authorities. Their experts came to Malaysia on Friday, and on the next day, we successfully opened the CVR and extracted the ‘memory puck’ component,” he said.
“However, we lack the equipment to retrieve the data (voice recording) from that ‘memory puck’, so it was sent to Singapore yesterday.”
He said the AAIB officer leading the investigation into the incident, Brigadier-General Tan Chee Kee from the Royal Malaysian Air Force, is in Singapore with other experts to retrieve the voice recording.
Meanwhile, AFP reported that investigators from the US National Transportation Safety Bureau, the Federal Aviation Administration, and the aircraft’s manufacturer were seen going through the wreckage at the crash site this morning.
The 12-member US team also flew a drone over the crash site.
The Beechcraft Model 390 (Premier 1) business jet crashed on the Guthrie Corridor Expressway near Bandar Elmina last Thursday, killing 10, including Pahang executive councillor and Pelangai assemblyman Johari Harun, 53.
Two of the 10 killed included a motorist and a motorcyclist.
The aircraft, which was on a flight from Langkawi to the Subang airport, had been cleared to land at 2.48pm but crashed two minutes later.
On Friday, Inspector-General of Police Razarudin Husain said the plane carried only a CVR and no flight data recorder.
“When we checked with the (AAIB), we were told this aircraft only had a CVR. Some other light aircraft also do not have flight data recorders,” he said.
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