/ 15 February 2000

KENYAN AIR PROBE STUTTERS

TWO weeks after a Kenya Airways jet plunged into the sea off Cote d’Ivoire, the cause of the crash remains a mystery as the plane’s black box sits in a sealed container in Abidjan. Director of Cote d’Ivoire’s civil aviation authority Jean Kouassi Abonoua said that the flight data recorder, retrieved from the debris in coastal waters on February 4, will finally be analysed in Canada, a country seen as neutral in the eyes of Kenyan authorities. The second black box, the cockpit voice recorder, remains at the bottom of the ocean, said Jean Kouassi Abonoua. Divers have so far found 125 bodies, 95 of which have been positively identified. Ten passengers aboard the plane survived the accident.