YAOUNDE, May 10 (Xinhua) -- The distress beacon of
the Kenya Airways plane which crashed last Saturday near Cameroon's commercial
capital of Douala with 114 people aboard did not work properly, therefore making
the localization work difficult, Cameroonian civil aviation official affirmed on
Thursday.
"The distress beacon normally sets to work
automatically during a crash and sets out a signal for a minimum period of eight
hours. However, it seems that it worked for just two seconds," said Ignatius
Sana Juma, director of Cameroonian civil aviation authority.
According to him, the only signal set out by Kenya
Airways' flight 507 had been caught at 02:03 on Saturday by satellite in a
research mission center in Toulouse, France, which responded to the control
tower of Douala giving the localization at 03:44 on Saturday.
The Cameroonian communication minister Elihezer Njoh
Mouelle explained on Wednesday that on the strength of the localization
indicated by the Toulouse center, the rescue work had been firstly directed to
the place which is more than 150 km far away from the actual site of the
accident.
In the past two days, the argument has been fierce in
the Cameroonian press which wonders the reason why the rescuer had not located
the wreckage of the Kenya Airways' twin-engined jet in 48 hours after its
crash.
YAOUNDE, May 8 (Xinhua) -- Cameroonian Prime Minister
Ephraim Inoni established a technical commission to investigate the crash of
Kenya Airways' flight KQ507, Cameroonian national radio reported Tuesday.
One of the two black boxes of the plane which crashed
on Saturday in Douala, commercial capital of Cameroon was found, Cameroon's
Civil Aviation Authorities announced Monday, at the same time clarifying the
black box was the one for flight settings.
The whereabouts of the one for recording cockpit
conversation were yet to be established. Full story
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