THE inflight recording of the midair crisis that left Qantas Flight 30 with a gaping hole has been lost, automatically overwritten as the crew made an emergency landing, investigators have said.
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But investigators from the Australian Transport Safety Bureau said yesterday it was "probable" the hole in the plane's fuselage that forced an emergency landing in Manila had been caused by an exploding oxygen cylinder.
A bureau spokesman, Neville Blyth, said yesterday that a review of the cockpit voice recorder - which records crew conversations, radio traffic and other ambient noise - revealed that the vital moments when QF30 lost cabin pressure had been recorded over.
The oldest recording on the device, which operates on a continuous two-hour loop, is of the diversion and descent into Manila. But he said this could be "very useful" for examining air flow through "acoustic spectrum analysis".
He said the explanation involving the explosion of a lost cylinder "is the most probable". Investigations were continuing into passenger's claims that the plane's oxygen supply had failed.
Qantas had to defend its safety and maintenance record again yesterday, after a flight from Adelaide to Melbourne on Monday night had to turn back because an undercarriage door had failed to close properly.
A Civil Aviation Authority spokesman, Peter Gibson, said the problem had posed "no safety risk to passengers" and the decision to turn back had been purely precautionary.
