In a scare Monday night reminiscent of last week’s crash of Swissair Flight 111, a charter plane belonging to a subsidiary of Swissair’s parent company returned to Halifax, Nova Scotia, shortly after reporting smoke in its galley. The Balair/CTA Airbus A-310 was on a flight from Zurich to Vancouver via a scheduled stop in Halifax with 144 passengers on board, SAirGroup spokeswoman Beatrice Tschanz said in Zurich. The smoke was caused by a short-circuit, she said. Bad weather Tuesday forced suspension of diving for Flight 111’s cockpit voice recorder until Wednesday at the earliest. The plane’s flight-data recorder was recovered Sunday. If retrieved intact, the voice recorder would reveal other noises in the cockpit besides the pilots’ conversation with controllers.
