Loke said the head of the Air Accident Investigation Bureau (AAIB) will travel to the US at 7pm tonight to send the “memory puck”, which contains the voice recording data, to its manufacturer in Florida.

“We are going to Florida as they have the equipment to get the voice recording data from the ‘memory puck’,” said Loke.

“We will head to the manufacturer’s laboratory next Monday and hopefully retrieve the data on the same day.

“If successful, all information will be brought back to Malaysia as soon as possible. So, please give us a little time.

“The parties involved in Florida will cooperate to try to retrieve the data, and we are grateful for the US government’s assistance as we need permits to enter all ‘sensitive areas’ there,” he said at a press conference here.

The AAIB, an agency under the transport ministry, is leading the investigation into the crash.

It managed to remove the “memory puck” containing the voice recording data and sent it to Singapore’s Transport Safety Investigation Bureau’s (TSIB) lab to obtain the voice recording as Malaysia does not have the equipment to do so.

However, Loke said yesterday that TSIB was unable to retrieve data from the “memory puck” of the Beechcraft Model 390 (Premier 1) aircraft.

The business jet crashed on the Guthrie Highway near Bandar Elmina last Thursday, killing 10, including Pahang executive councillor and Pelangai assemblyman Johari Harun, 53.

The aircraft was flying from Langkawi to Subang airport. It had been cleared to land at 2.48pm but crashed two minutes later.