## The Flight Recorder Evidence: What the Black Box Recorded
The technical dimension of JAT Flight 367’s investigation deserves attention beyond the official conclusions about the bomb. The black box — or more precisely, the combination of the flight data recorder and the cockpit voice recorder — captured information about the final moments of the flight that provides objective, instrumental evidence about what happened.
The flight data recorder on a DC-9-32 of that era recorded parameters including altitude, airspeed, heading, vertical acceleration, and several other variables. The cockpit voice recorder captured audio from the flight deck. Together, these devices provide a record of the aircraft’s state in the seconds before and during the catastrophic event.
The specific parameters recorded at the moment of the explosion — altitude consistent with approximately 10,160 meters, airspeed consistent with cruising flight, the abrupt cessation of recording consistent with catastrophic structural failure — are part of the evidentiary basis for the official conclusion that the aircraft broke apart at cruising altitude.
This evidence is directly relevant to the shootdown theory’s central claim. If the aircraft had been forced to lower altitude by a military intercept and then shot down, the flight data recorder would show that trajectory — a departure from cruising altitude, a loss of airspeed, a descent below the cruising level, before the final event. The available accounts of the Amsterdam expert analysis, which brought together technical experts from multiple countries to examine the flight recorder data, concluded that no such trajectory was visible in the record. The recorder showed cruising flight right up to the moment of catastrophic event.