as 23:58:00. As it can be accepted that the aircraft was on track, the position given as 065° East would have been at latitude 15°40ʹ12ʺ South and position 060° East at latitude 18°57ʹ54ʺ South.
There is no suggestion whatsoever of any distress in the routine HF radio transmissions which ended at 23:14:00.
On the tape of the 30 minute cycle CVR (see paragraph 1.11 p 37 below), which had no time injection, much of the first 28 minutes period was unintelligible. Sufficient data was, however, recovered to indicate that the conversation was on purely personal topics and did not relate to the flight in any way. The Board acceded to a request by the representative of IFALPA not to publish details of this purely personal conversation. That ruling was in accord with the Board's understanding of the general practice in accident inquiries. The character of the flight deck conversation changed abruptly 28 minutes 30 seconds after commencement of the recording cycle, when the master fire warning alarm sounded. Somebody, probably the pilot, inquired where the warning had come from and received the reply that it had come from the main deck cargo. The pilot then asked that the check list be read. Some 30 seconds later somebody on the flight deck uttered an oath. This was followed by the CVR 800 Hz test tone on all four channels
