Flight 17's black boxes arrive in UK for investigators

The AAIB team will now go through the information from the cockpit voice recorder which will give them two hours of pilots’ conversations as well as studying the contents of the flight data recorder (FDR).

It is thought that the AAIB will be able to send details of their findings to the Dutch within 24 hours – giving the experts in the Netherlands further information of the last moments of the doomed Boeing 777 as it fell to earth in eastern Ukraine.

As the UK investigators pored over the black boxes, bodies from the crash site were arriving in Netherlands where the country’s king and queen were taking part in a national day of mourning.

An unconfirmed number of bodies were released by the rebels yesterday and taken to the Ukrainian government-controlled city of Kharkiv by train.

Two military aircraft will fly some of them to Eindhoven this afternoon, where they will be met by the royals, Dutch prime minister Mark Rutte and relatives.

The Netherlands government said a minute’s silence will be held before a motorcade takes them to the Korporaal van Oudheusden barracks, where the process of identifying them will begin.

Mr Rutte has warned that it could take ``weeks or even months'' to identify all the victims.

The Dutch are leading the investigation into what happened to the Amsterdam to Kuala Lumpur flight, at the request of the Ukrainian government.

A British team of police officers will assist with victim identification in the Netherlands once bodies have arrived.

The EU has inched towards introducing economic sanctions against Vladimir Putin’s Russian “cronies” in response to the passenger jet’s downing by what is believed to have been a surface-to-air missile fired by the separatists that the Kremlin backs.