Aviation experts examine black boxes from Russian plane crash site

Aviation experts on March 20 began examining the black boxes from the FlyDubai flight that crashed amid high winds at an airport in southern Russia, while emergency workers finished combing the debris-laden runway.

FlyDubai's Boeing 737-800 from Dubai nosedived and exploded in a giant fireball before dawn March 19 after trying to land for a second time in strong winds in the Russian city of Rostov-on-Don.

FlyDubai confirmed all 62 people, including seven crew members, on the plane were killed. Most of the passengers were Russian.

Several planes had trouble landing at the airport at the time of the crash, with one trying to land three times before giving up and diverting to another airport, experts said.

Sergei Zaiko, deputy chairman of the Inter-State Aviation Committee, told Russia's Channel One that experts on March 20 were looking at the plane's cockpit voice and flight data recorders, which were delivered to Moscow earlier in the day.

They will be viewed by experts from Russia, the United Arab Emirates, France and the U.S., since the American-made Boeing plane had French-made engines.

The flight recorders from the jet are badly damaged and could take up to a month to decode, Russia's airline regulator said on March 20.

"The received recorders are badly damaged mechanically," Russia's Interstate Aviation Committee (IAC) said in a statement on its website, alongside a photo of a crumpled recorder, Reuters reported. 

"Specialists ... have started the inspection, opening and removing the memory modules from their protective coverings for further work to restore the cable connections and prepare to copy the data," the IAC said.

Flydubai's CEO Ghaith al-Ghaith said at a news conference in...