WASHINGTON Initial evidence from the two black boxes' retrieved from the crashed Gulf Air airbus A320 indicate that there were no mechanical problems with the plane and point to pilot error, U.S. air safety officials said Thursday as carried by AFP. Investigators at the U.S. National Transportation Safety Board (NTSB) said in a statement, "preliminary FDR (flight data recorder) and CVR (cockpit voice recorder) readout indicate that aircraft systems and engine parameters were in normal operating conditions.
" Weather conditions at the airport were good when the plane crashed, they noted. The Gulf Air plane crashed into water off Bahrain on August 23 killing all 143 people on board. The Bahrain authorities sent the two black boxes' to Washington for analysis by the NTSB. The preliminary findings reinforce the theory that human error was behind the disaster of the airbus plane flying from Cairo. The black boxes show that the pilot of the plane was at the controls during the last moments of the flight and suggest that the flight crew were overtaken by a series of events that sowed confusion in the cockpit.
The crew appeared to be overwhelmed by the tasks they had to perform and may even have become victims of spatial disorientation, according to sources close to the investigation.