Pakistan finds crashed plane's black box

KARACHI, July 11 (Reuters) Investigators have recovered the flight data and cockpit voice recorders of a Pakistan International Airlines' (PIA) plane that crashed killing all 45 people on board, a senior official said today.

The Fokker F-27 turboprop, built in 1964, crashed yesterday the outskirts of the central city of Multan two minutes after take off.

Shahnawaz Dara, head of PIA's flight safety wing, said the flight data recorder and the cockpit voice recorder with information about the aircraft's final moments were recovered in good condition.

''Pilots did not contact the control tower before the crash ... the voice recorder will give a direction on what was happening at the time of the crash and why there was no contact from the cockpit crew,'' Dara told Reuters.

''Both pieces of equipment are good enough to find out what happened to the aircraft before the crash.'' Pakistan's aviation regulator said help of foreign experts could be sought to examine the recorders if necessary.

''We don't want to spoil any evidence and if we feel that we need foreign experts to handle them, we will go for it,'' said Air Vice Marshal Mohammad Safdar Khan, deputy managing director of Civil Aviation Authority.

Khan said it would take at least a month to complete the investigation into the air crash. For now, investigators were keeping all options open on the possible cause of the crash.

Witnesses said they saw flames coming from the aircraft after it took off, and it appeared to be tilting to the right.

It was the third Fokker Friendship operated by PIA to have crashed since 1970.

PIA officials said there were no plans to ground the remaining six Fokkers in the fleet and all of the planes, including the one that crashed, were airworthy.

However, airlines' pilots demanded an immediate phasing out of all the Fokkers.

REUTERS PKS RS1641