KIEV, July 23 (RIA Novosti) – Flight recorders recovered from the Malaysia Airlines Boeing 777 that crashed in eastern Ukraine have been delivered to the United Kingdom under the supervision of the International Civil Aviation Organization, the state commission for investigating the airliner crash said in a statement Wednesday.
“At 7:45 a.m. [04:45 GMT local time] on July 23, the black boxes from the Boeing 777 airliner arrived in Great Britain under the supervision of the ICAO," the statement reads.
The statement reads that an understanding has been reached on the procedure of the transfer of the plane’s black boxes, confirmed by the common technical protocol agreement signed by the Netherlands, Malaysia, representatives of Ukraine and ICAO. The agreement assures that the flight recorders, known as black boxes, were handed over to the Ukrainian side, but that the Ukrainian side did not tamper with them and never had control over them. After the signing, the black boxes were delivered to Kiev by plane and then to the UK under the supervision of the ICAO.
The Malaysia Airlines plane with 298 people on board, including 15 crew members, crashed on July 17 near the town of Torez in Ukraine’s Donetsk Region.
Ukrainian government and militia have been trading blame for the alleged downing of the airliner, with independence supporters saying they lacked the technology to shoot down a target flying at altitude of 32,000 feet.
Russia believes the investigation should be carried out by an international group of specialists under the aegis of ICAO.
