Indonesia closes in on location of plane
■ Authorities pick up black box signals off north coast
Jakarta, Oct 31: Indonesian investigators said they were homing in on the black box from a crashed jetliner after locating its “pings” on Wednesday, two days after the jet crashed shortly after take-off with 189 people on board.
Retrieving the black box will be key to unlocking why the Boeing 737-MAX, one of the world's newest and most advanced commercial passenger jets, nosedived into the Java sea so soon after leaving Jakarta.
Authorities picked up the box's signals some 3040 meters (100-130 feet) below the surface of the water off Indonesia's north coast, where the plane crashed on Monday.
“We have not found the black box’s location, but it's in the area, within a three-kilometre radius,” Soerjanto Tjahjono, head of Indonesia’s National Transportation Safety Committee, told Kompas TV.
“Usually the black box location is near the main wreckage.” The box contains flight data that shows the speed, altitude and direction of the plane, while the cockpit voice recorder keeps track of conversations and sounds in cockpit.
Dozens of divers were taking part in the 1,000strong personnel recovery effort along with helicopters and ships, but authorities have all but ruled out finding any survivors.
The development comes as Boeing officials were due to meet with Lion Air on Wednesday, after Indonesia ordered an inspection of the US plane maker’s 737-MAX jets. Indonesia’s transport minister Budi Karya Sumadi took the unusual step of ordering the temporary removal of Lion Air’s technical director and several other staff who cleared the flight, citing government authority over the aviation sector.
He later stressed that the measure meant to free up the technical director to help with the crash probe.
Aviation experts say it is too early to determine what caused the accident.
But Lion’s admission that the plane had an unspecified technical issue on a previous flight — as well as the plane’s abrupt nosedive just 12 minutes after takeoff — have raised several questions.