“We have received all data, including flight data, from air navigation. We have determined that there is indeed a fault [in the aircraft]but to find the exact technical problem, we will need data from the black box.”
Earlier, the pinnacle of the National Search and Rescue Agency, Muhammad Syaugi, confirmed that the information recorder was 500 meters from the coordinates of the missing plane.
“We hope this will shed light [into the crash] speed up the investigation… we hope this is good news for the victims’ families,” he said.
No one survived, only body parts have been found so far.
Relatives desperately want to say goodbye to their loved ones, so the first funeral of one of the passengers took place on Thursday.
But many others have yet to be located, and analysts hope additional victims may still be found among most of the wreckage.
“I assume there will still be a lot of bodies in the seats,” said aviation analyst Dudi Sudibyo.
Dozens of divers together with helicopters and ships are collaborating in the huge rescue operation, but authorities have all but ruled out finding any survivors.
Why does Indonesia have such a foul fame for aviation safety?
Why does Indonesia have such a foul fame for aviation safety?
The black boxes that airlines are required to put in give investigators the most effective probability of discovering what caused the brand new jet’s crash. The devices record information concerning the aircraft’s speed, altitude and direction, in addition to flight crew conversations.
Authorities say the flight data recorder has been recovered, however the cockpit voice recorder remains to be being sought.
“To determine the reason for the crash, we also need the cockpit voice recorder, but when we’re unable to seek out it, there are still some ways to find out the reason for the crash,” Wibowo said.
At the port of Jakarta on Thursday, representatives from Boeing and the U.S. National Transportation Safety Board joined an Indonesian team that sifted through twisted metal parts of the plane and piles of torn clothes, shoes, wallets and cellphones of passengers.
The Boeing single-aisle plane that flew from Jakarta to town of Pangkal Pinang is one in all the latest and most advanced industrial airliners on this planet.
Despite the name, black boxes are literally shiny orange with reflective stripes. They are built to survive at great depths and extreme temperatures, and are equipped with a beacon that may emit a signal for one month.
According to aviation experts, black boxes help explain almost 90 percent of all accidents.
“The data from the plane – the engine, all the instruments – is recorded there,” Sudibyo said. “If there is an anomaly, some technical problem, it will be recorded there as well.”
“My body has these parts too,” say Lion Air rescuers
“My body has these parts too,” say Lion Air rescuers
The passengers’ stays are sent to hospital for DNA comparison with relatives.
Forensic experts identified Jannatun Cintya Dewi as the primary victim of the accident that occurred on Wednesday evening.
On Thursday, the 24-year-old official’s coffin was carried by pallbearers through the streets of her hometown of Sidoarjo in East Java.
Devi’s mother collapsed and needed to be carried home, and friends and relatives wiped away tears because the coffin was placed in a freshly dug grave strewn with flowers. At one end was a bowl of fruit and two palm branches.
Some relatives shared painful stories about their last contact with family members.
A selfie taken by newlywed Deryl Fida Febrianto and sent to his wife about half-hour before the plane crash has gone viral on the Internet.
Aviation experts are surprised by the accident but say it is just too early to find out what caused the crash.
Lion’s admission that the jet had an unspecified technical problem on a previous flight, in addition to its sudden and fatal dive, raised questions on whether it had defects specific to the newly introduced model, including a failure of the airspeed and altitude measurement system.
The accident also raised concerns about Indonesia’s poor record on aviation safety, which until recently saw its carriers face long-term bans from entering the airspace of the European Union and the United States.
Transport Minister Budi Karya Sumadi said the federal government had asked Lion Air to suspend some officials in reference to the crash.
“It doesn’t mean they were fired…[their licences] they are suspended to warn them that they are responsible,” he said. “Whether they can work again depends on the investigation.”
The low-cost carrier has been involved in numerous incidents, including a fatal crash in 2004 and a collision between two Lion Air planes at Jakarta’s Soekarno-Hatta Airport.
In 2014, 162 people died when an AirAsia plane crashed within the Java Sea during a storm.
This article appeared within the print edition of the South China Morning Post as: divers get better black box from crashed jet
