UPS plane was allowed to land in Doha

The pilots of a UPS cargo plane, which crashed in Dubai on September 3, were offered the chance to land in Doha but instead chose to return to the emirate, according to the UAE General Civil Aviation Authority (GCAA).

"The initial analysis of the downloaded data from the plane's recorders indicated that there was a fire warning followed by smoke in the cockpit, as reported by the crew about 28 minutes (after) takeoff," the GCAA said in a statement, which was published by the AFP news wire.

"The crew were offered by Bahrain Air Traffic Control to land at Doha, but they decided to return... to Dubai, then they experienced cockpit visibility and communications problems,” the statement added.

The UPS cargo plane crashed in an unpopulated area of Dubai, killing the two pilots onboard.

The Cockpit Voice Recorder (CVR) from the Boeing 747 - 400 aircraft was recovered on September 4, approximately six hours after the accident and the Digital Flight Data Recorder (DFDR) was recovered on September 7 “in a reasonable condition,” the GCAA said.

The two recorders were then sent to the US for analysis, along with one UAE investigator, to work on data recovery, the GCAA said in a statement on September 13.

“The investigation team is led by the UAE General Civil Aviation Authority (GCAA), and comprises of 20 experts from GCAA and from the USA National Transportation Safety Board (NTSB), Boeing, FAA and UPS, who arrived to Dubai on September 5 to assist in investigation as requested by UAE,” the GCAA added.

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