Sudanese officials to examine doomed plan’s black box in London

KHARTOUM, July 20 (AFP) — Sudan Airways officials are due to fly to London Tuesday to join British insurers in opening the black box of a Sudanese plane that crashed two weeks earlier, killing all but one of the 116 people on board.

The official Al-Anbaa newspaper reported Sunday that a Sudan Airways pilot and engineer would travel to London to attend the opening of the black box containing flight data of the moments leading up to the July 8 crash.

Also present would be delegates from a British insurance company, the newspaper said, without naming the company.

The newspaper reported that the black box had been sent to Britain shortly after the Sudan Airways Boeing 737 crashed near the Red Sea city of Port Sudan, leaving a three-year-old Sudanese boy as the sole survivor.

The boy was sent to Britain for medical treatment for burns and the loss of part of a leg.

Sudanese officials said the doomed plane’s pilot reported “technical problems” about 10 minutes after taking off from Port Sudan for the capital Khartoum and told the control tower he was trying to return to the airport.

However, the plane crashed on land near the Red Sea coast several kilometers (miles) from the airport.