Multinational aerospace corporation Airbus Group has promised to help Vietnamese investigators decrypt the black box of the Vietnamese coast guard aircraft that disappeared from radar last Thursday during a search mission of a missing fighter aircraft pilot.

The Spanish-made CASA-212 aircraft, carrying nine members of the search crew and captained by Colonel Le Kiem Toan, lost contact at around 12:30 pm while flying 44 nautical miles southwest of Bach Long Vi Island off the northern city of Hai Phong.

The coast guard aircraft had earlier the same day taken off from the Gia Lam military airport in Hanoi to carry out a search mission for the then-missing pilot of a crashed Russian-made fighter jet, whose body was found drifting last Friday at a location 33 nautical miles from Hon Me Islet off the north-central province of Thanh Hoa.

The plane is believed to have crashed at sea, after its debris, including fragments of the fuselage, wings and landing gear, was salvaged last Friday morning about 13 to 15 nautical miles southwest of Bach Long Vi.

Representatives of Airbus Group, the multinational aerospace and defense corporation that manufactured the flight recorder of CASA-212, had a meeting on Tuesday evening with the Civil Aviation Authority (CAA) and the Air Defense – Air Force Armed Service of Vietnam to discuss search and rescue plans as well as post-catastrophic investigation.

Airbus promised to help Vietnamese authorities handle the data retrieved from the plane’s black box and reconstruct the issue that had led to the crash under the supervision of Vietnam’s Ministry of Defense.

The plane manufacturer added that the whole process would be kept completely confidential between the two parties.

According to Lai Xuan Thanh, director general at CAA, said the cause of the crash is crucial to preventing similar events from happening in the future, adding that Vietnam welcomed and appreciated assistance from the plane manufacturer in the process.

Meanwhile, the search for the missing CASA-212 airplane and its nine-member crew is still being carried out without any further result by the National Committee for Search and Rescue, its office said on Tuesday.

Traces of oil leak were found on Sunday about 17 nautical miles off Bach Long Vi Island, and a wreck piece stretching 13 meters long and up to five meters wide could also be seen lying on the 60-meter deep seabed near the oil leak.

The retrieval and identification of the piece have temporarily ceased for the last two days, however, due to unfavorable weather conditions at sea.