A CABLE LAYER VESSEL CHARTERED TO
RECOVER AIR MOOREA PLANE BLACK BOX
Alda
Marine, an Alcatel-Lucent and Louis Dreyfus Armateurs joint-venture has
signed a charter agreement with French Government to recover the black box and
some debris from Air Moorea’ Twin Otter crashed on 9th august
2007.
The French Government, through its air crash investigating body, Bureau Enquête et Analyses (BEA) has chartered the cable layer Ile de Ré for a one month duration campaign. The vessel has left Nouméa (New Caledonia) on the 20th august and will arrive on site at Moorea atoll on the 25th. Its task will be to retrieve and recover the plane black box (cockpit voice recorder) that should be lying by 430 meters depth. This mission may be enlarged to the recovering of some plane debris as the BEA may require.
Ile de Ré, based in Nouméa, is a cable layer specialised in the lying and maintenance of submarine telecommunication cables. Owned and operated by Alda Marine, a joint venture between Alcatel-Lucent and LDA, she is dedicated to OPT, Alcatel-Lucent client, for the Gondwana project, a cable that will link Nouméa to Sydney. This operation has been suspended for the duration of the BEA charter. She is also dedicated to the maintenance of some Pacific cables (Fidji zone). In case of cable break down in the Fidji area, she would leave Moorea to repare the cable as soon as possible.
LDA crews and teams have already demonstrated their skills in a similar operation with the recovering of the two black boxes from the Boeing plane that crashed near Sharm El Sheikh in 2004. The two black boxes were found by more than 1,000 meters depth.
Louis Dreyfus Armateurs and Alcatel-Lucent wish to express their deepest sympathy and solidarity to the victims families.
