US appoints investigator as representative in probe
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WASHINGTON • The National Transportation Safety Board (NTSB) has appointed a senior air safety investigator as a United States accredited representative to the investigation of the crash of a Boeing 737-800 aircraft near Wuzhou, China.
Representatives from Boeing, CFM, a joint venture of General Electric and Safran that produced the engines, and the Federal Aviation Administration will serve as technical advisers, the NTSB said on Monday.
Under an international agreement, the US can serve as a representative to the crash investigation because the plane was manufactured in the country.
It is not clear if or when the NTSB will travel to the crash site in China.
The Chinese Embassy in Washington did not immediately respond to a request for comment.
The flight that crashed was operated by China Eastern Airlines, with 132 people aboard.
In 2018, after a Boeing 737 Max crashed in Indonesia, the NTSB immediately dispatched investigators to the South-east Asian nation to participate in the Indonesian government's probe.
Then NTSB chairman Robert Sumwalt said in a 2019 testimony before the US Congress that during the search for the "black boxes" - the flight data recorder and cockpit voice recorder - "an NTSB investigator was stationed onboard one of the search vessels".
REUTERS
