Team Has Found Scraps Of Orange And Green Metal 31 Years After Airplane Impacted A Mountain In Bolivia

A team searching for the Flight Data and Cockpit Voice Recorders from Eastern Airlines Flight 980, which impacted a mountainside in Bolivia 31 years ago, may have finally located the devices, along with other wreckage.

According to Wikipedia, the flight was en route from Asuncion in Paraguay to Miami on January 1, 1985, when the plane suddenly changed course, possibly to avoid weather. The Boeing 727-200 impacted Mount Illimani at an altitude of 19,600 feet, resulting in the fatal injury of all 29 people on board.

The wreckage was discovered by climbers in 2006. Operation Thonapa was mounted this year by Dan Futrell and Isaac Stoner in an effort to locate the flight recorders from the aircraft.

Team members from Operation Thonapa claim they have discovered fragments of metal colored international orange that are possibly the lost flight recorders. In a blog post dated June 4, they posted numerous photos of wreckage they believe came from the aircraft.

But it is unlikely that any of the data from the flight is recoverable, according to the post. Futrell, a former Airborne-Ranger qualified Army infantry officer, said in the post that a roll of magnetic tape was also recovered, but it was not known if it was from the flight recorders or a video camera belonging to a passenger on the airplane. "We’ll work with some experts once we get home to determine if any information can be pulled from the tape. We are hopeful, but there may be little readable on the deteriorated roll. Fingers crossed" he wrote.

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