Why the black boxes of AZAL's Embraer-190 will be sent to Brazil Key reasons explained

As previously reported by the Ministry of Transport of Kazakhstan, it has been decided to send the black boxes of the Embraer-190 aircraft of AZAL, which crashed near Aktau, to Brazil.

Caliber.Az suggests that there are several reasons for this decision.

Firstly, the aircraft manufacturer, Embraer, is based in Brazil. The specialists at CENIPA (Brazilian Air Force Investigation Centre) have significant experience working with such models. Secondly, the centre has advanced technologies that allow for the prompt and highly efficient decoding of the data from the black boxes. Moreover, sending the black boxes to the country of the manufacturer is a common practice in the aviation industry, as the manufacturer typically has the necessary expertise and technologies to decode them effectively.

It is crucial for Azerbaijan that the investigation into the plane crash remains impartial. As President Ilham Aliyev noted on December 29, Azerbaijan, for understandable reasons, rejected Russia's offer to transfer the investigation to the Interstate Aviation Committee (IAC).

Many are also curious about how long it takes to decode the black boxes. Typically, this process takes from a few days to several weeks, depending on the condition of the black boxes themselves.

For example, during the investigation into the Ethiopian Airlines Flight 302 crash (Boeing 737 MAX) in 2019, the recordings were found on March 11, and their initial analysis was completed by March 17.

In the case of Air France 447 (Airbus A330) in 2009, the black boxes were only found on May 1, 2011 (two years after the incident), but their initial decoding took just four days, completing on May 5.

In the case of the Lion Air 610 crash (Boeing 737 MAX) in 2018, the flight data recorder was found on November 1, and by November 4, experts had extracted the main information—primary decoding took three days.

In the case of Germanwings 9525 (Airbus A320) in 2015, the voice recorder was found on the day of the tragedy (March 24), and basic data was retrieved by March 25—just one day.

Thus, the duration of black box analysis varies, but considering the experience and technical capabilities of CENIPA in Brazil, the decoding is likely to be carried out as quickly and accurately as possible.