Lufthansa Fears Germanwings Black Box Might Be Severely Damaged

(RTTNews) - Lufthansa Officials fear that it may be difficult to trace the second black box of the doomed Germanwings flight that crashed on the Alps with 150 passengers, last week. The airline suspects that the black box might have been badly damaged during the crash, as they could not trace any signals from it. The investigators were able to find the first device-the cockpit voice recorder-earlier.

Usually, black box recorders, which are orange in color and wrapped in titanium or stainless steel, record all the vital logs during a flight. It can record breathing rates of pilots, detect stress levels, and even record if pilot suffers a heart attack. The black boxes can survive a temperature of more than 1000 degree Celsius and a weight of more than 220 kilograms. They are kept at the back end of the plane.

Earlier, a mangled cockpit voice recorder was recovered from the crash site that point to co-pilot's intentional decent of the flight after locking out the pilot.

Investigators are finding it difficult to retrieve the remains of the plane that hit the mountain at a speed of around 800 kilometer per hour and shattered along the rugged terrain of the mountain. No intact bodies of the victims were recovered, however, the officials collected 80 distinct DNA samples from the site.

Investigators are trying to clear a mountain route for the access of all terrain vehicles to the crash site.