Device Had Been Recovered By Mountain Climbers From Boston In Bolivia

The NTSB has finally taken custody of the data recorder from Eastern Airlines Flight 980 that was discovered last year by two mountain climbers from Boston.

ABC News reports that NTSB investigator Bill English met Dan Futrell and Isaac Stoner at Norwood Memorial Airport (KOWD) on Wednesday morning to collect the device which it is hoped will give some indication as to what happened on the flight.

Eastern Airlines Flight 980 impacted Mt. Illimani in Bolivia on January 1, 1985 at an elevation of some 16,000 feet. It was on approach to La Paz, Bolivia with 29 people on board the Boeing  727. There were no survivors.

Multiple attempts to recover the flight recorders were abandoned because of the remoteness and inaccessibility of the accident site.

But the two Boston-area climbers came across the so-called black box during an expedition to the mountain last year, and returned to Boston with the device. That began a lengthy legal and diplomatic process to allow the NTSB to take custody of the device and see if any data could still be retrieved from the magnetic tape in the recorder. International rules require that the country in which an accident occured take the lead in any investigation, and the U.S. had to obtain permission from Bolivia to examine the recorder.

That permission finally came last month, and they flew to KOWD to pick it up on Wednesday.

The NTSB will report their findings to Bolivian authorities after analyzing the tape, which is expected to take no more than a few weeks, according to the report.

FMI: www.ntsb.gov