First black box from AirAsia jet retrieved by navy divers
Print Edition
INDONESIAN navy divers retrieved the black box flight data recorder from the wreck of an AirAsia passenger jet yesterday, a major step toward identifying the cause of the crash that killed all 162 people on board.
But there was confusion about what happened in the final moments of flight QZ8501, which crashed off the Indonesian coast on December 28, with one official saying the plane probably exploded before hitting the water and another disputing that theory.
The Airbus A320-200 airliner lost contact with air traffic control in bad weather less than halfway into a two-hour flight from Indonesia’s second-biggest city of Surabaya to Singapore.
“At 7:11, we succeeded in lifting the part of the black box known as the flight data recorder,” Fransiskus Bambang Soelistyo, head of the National Search and Rescue Agency, told reporters.
The second so-called black box, containing the cockpit voice recorder, is located about 20 meters away from where the flight data recorder was found, but divers have not yet been able to get to it.
Supriyadi, operations coordinator for the search and rescue agency, said it appeared to be under a wing. “So we will use air bags to lift it. This will be done tomorrow.”
Supriyadi said the wreckage indicated that the plane likely “experienced an explosion” before hitting the water due to a significant change in air pressure.
He said the left side of the plane seemed to have disintegrated, pointing to a change in pressure that could have caused an explosion.
Supporting this possibility, he added, was the fact that fishermen in the area had reported hearing an explosion and saw smoke above the water.
However, Santoso Sayogo, an investigator at the National Transportation Safety Committee, said there was no data to support that theory.
The flight data recorder was brought by helicopter to Pangkalan Bun, the southern Borneo town that has been the base for the search effort, and then flown to Jakarta for analysis.
It looked to be in good condition, said Tatang Kurniadi, head of the transport safety committee.
Investigators may need up to a month to get a complete reading of the data.
Forty-eight bodies have been retrieved from the Java Sea and brought to Surabaya for identification.
Relatives of the victims have urged authorities to make finding the remains of their loved ones the priority.
“I told our soldiers that the search isn’t over yet,” Armed Forces chief General Moeldoko told reporters. “I am sure the remaining victims are in the body of the plane. So we need to find those.”
President Joko Widodo said the disaster exposed widespread problems in air travel management in Indonesia.
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