Authorities are investigating the black box of a plane that plummeted from the skies before landing in New Zealand`s Auckland, injuring 50 people on board.
The Boeing 787 Dreamliner, a LATAM Airlines flight from Australia`s Sydney to New Zealand`s Auckland on Monday suddenly lost altitude over the Tasman Sea due to a "technical problem" which caused in-flight turbulence throwing passengers and three crew members not wearing seatbelts at the time around the cabin.
"The `black box` recordings would provide detailed evidence of any control inputs made by the crew as well as flight parameters showing airspeed, altitude, control settings etc," Emeritus Professor David O`Hare of the Department of Psychology, University of Otago, said on Wednesday.
This would show, for example, if there had been an autopilot disconnect and whether this was associated with any pilot input, O`Hare said.
"There is no reason to connect this incident with other recent events involving Boeing airliners," he said.
Ashok Poduval, chief executive officer of the School of Aviation at Massey University, said it is premature to draw conclusions about the safety aspects of this aircraft.
"An incident of this nature is quite rare, and I have referred to it as a `black swan` event," Poduval said, a lesson to be learnt, however, is to have seat belts fastened, maybe loosely, whenever seated in an aircraft.
"People flew through the cabin," a passenger on board the flight was quoted as saying in a local media report.
According to the report, St John Ambulance said that 12 people were sent to hospitals including 10 to the Middlemore Hospital with one passenger in a serious condition after the plane landed at the Auckland international airport.
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