The cockpit voice recorder for Swissair Flight 111 survived a violent crash into the Atlantic and eight days under water, giving investigators 30 minutes of good quality tape to analyze what happened to the jet, investigators said Saturday.
At a news briefing in Ottawa, investigators said the voices were clear. But they declined to give any details at this point about the content of the recording.They also declined to say whether the recorder stopped six minutes before the crash, as was the case with the flight data recorder. Both recorders ran on the same power source.
"All I can say at this time is we do have good voices on the recorder and there is a lot of sound and conversation taking place and we have a lot to work with," said John Maxwell, director of air investigations for Canada's transportation safety board.
Although investigators already had a tape of the conversation between the pilots and air traffic controllers, the cockpit voice recorder would have captured additional talk between the two pilots as well as any irregular noises.
The Geneva-bound MD-11, which originated in New York, lost contact with air traffic controllers six minutes before plummeting into the waters off the fishing village Peggy's Cove, killing all 229 aboard.
Having the last six minutes of conversation between the two pilots would certainly help investigators, Maxwell said. But the problems with the jet would have started well before those final minutes, leaving it up for debate which would be better to have: the very end of the tape, or the very beginning.
Cockpit voice recorders run on a continuous 30-minute cycle, taping the most recent half-hour of talk and sound.
"We've seen many reports suggesting we're in somewhat desperate straits if we don't have the last six minutes, and that's certainly not the case," Maxwell said. "When you've only got 30 minutes of cockpit voice recorder, it can become a bit of a debating point as to which is the best 30 minutes to have."
Maxwell said it could take weeks before engineers decipher all of the sounds and words on the recording. Under Canadian law, the full transcript will not be released to protect the privacy of the pilots.
The cockpit voice recorder was pulled from the Atlantic on Friday evening, near the spot where the other so-called "black box" was found five days earlier.
The voice recorder could help investigators gain an insight into what problems the pilots were facing, how they reacted and what remedies they tried.
It also will help make sense of the flight data recording, "which at this moment is rather confusing," Maxwell said.
The data recorder, which monitors about 250 pieces of data from the jet, appeared to be working normally until the pilots radioed distress. After that, the recorder shows a rapid increase in mechanical irregularities, Maxwell said.
Maxwell also said Saturday that investigators were going over maintenance records from the jet, but he did not discuss any details or possible conclusions.
Earlier Saturday, the medical examiner identified another victim, bringing the total of those identified to just five of the 229 who died 10 days ago.