KEY POINTS:
French investigators are today expected to hear the last words of the pilots and crew on the Air New Zealand flight which crashed off the coast of southern France in last year.
The three-year-old Airbus A320 crashed into the Mediterranean on November 28 during acceptance trials before it was handed back to Air New Zealand by the German company XL Airways after a two-year lease.
Seven people died, including the two German pilots and five New Zealanders.
Six of the seven bodies have since been recovered but have yet to be identified.
The aircraft's flight data recorder and the cockpit voice recorder were both recovered from the wreckage in 40 metres of water but were too badly damaged for data to be retrieved in France and had to be sent to America for analysis.
Ken Matthews, from the Transport Accident Investigation Commission (TAIC), said the French investigators would today find out what was contained on the cockpit voice recorder.
He said some background noise may have to be filtered out to obtain useable data from the recorder.
The investigators did not know what they had, "but they have got something".
It was hoped that the cockpit voice recorder would give a vital clue to the cause of the crash.
The 150-seat A320 was on its final approach to Perpignan Airport when it crashed. There was no mayday call from the flight crew and nothing to indicate anything was wrong.
Investigators had little hard data to use in the inquiry, other than the radar track showing the aircraft's heading, height and speed and air traffic control tapes.
The cockpit voice recorder and the second black box containing flight data, were crucial in determining a cause of the crash.
Last week TAIC said if either black box produced hard evidence on the cause of the crash, the plane wreckage may be left on the seabed.
The voice recorder would be examined at the Paris headquarters of the Bureau d'Enquetes et d'Analyses, the lead crash investigator.
Mr Matthews, who was in France soon after the crash as part of the inquiry, said he was confident good data would be recovered about the cause of the crash.
The four Air New Zealand staff who died were Captain Brian Horrell, 52, from Auckland; and engineers Murray White, 37, from Auckland, Michael Gyles, 49, from Christchurch, and Noel Marsh, 35, from Christchurch. The fifth New Zealand victim was Civil Aviation Authority airworthiness inspector Jeremy Cook, 58, of Wellington.
- NZPA
