equipment and procedures. The Board also inspected, during August 1989, the wreckage assembled in the "Debris Hanger" at Jan Smuts Airport, and it viewed the more important of the more than 3 000 photographs of the wreckage on the sea-bed taken in Operation Resolve, and certain of the more than 800 hours of video tapes of some aspects of the underwater operations. The Board also received and considered numerous reports of fires in aircraft, and a great deal of documentation from ICAO, IATA, various airlines, pilots' associations and the statements of numerous experts which had been obtained by the technical investigation team in the course of assembling the data placed before the Board at the public hearings. Also investigated and considered were numerous communications from members of the public, particularly on their experiences of spontaneous fires in various types of goods.
Some explanation is warranted of the time taken since the accident to reach the stage of public hearings. As Mr van Zyl stated in his testimony, "We have spent thousands and thousands of hours on the Helderberg investigation". The fruitless search for pinger signals and thereafter the prolonged search for the wreckage of the aircraft were followed by extensive efforts to find a suitable contractor for the endeavours to reach the wreckage and to lift selected portions thereof. In the then state of the art this was a difficult and lengthy operation which necessitated obtaining the required information and advice, working from scratch, negotiating a suitable contract and making the required provision for personnel, organization, auxiliary
