Indonesia deploys divers to hunt for doomed plane’s cockpit records
JAVA SEA, Indonesia (Reuters) – Indonesia deployed divers on Tuesday to search for an airliner that crashed with 189 people on board. “Pinger locators” tried to zero in on the plane’s cockpit recorders and find out why a new plane went down minutes after take-off.
Indonesia, one of the world’s fastest-growing aviation markets, has an imperfect safety record. With growing fears that all on board have died, the crash is set to rank as the country’s second-worst flight disaster.
Ground staff lost contact with flight JT610 of budget airline Lion Air 13 minutes after the Boeing 737 MAX 8 aircraft took off early Monday morning from the airport in Jakarta, the capital, on its way to the tin-mining town of Pangkal Pinang.
Dozens of relatives of those on board gathered at a police hospital where body bags were brought for forensic doctors to try to identify victims, including by taking saliva swabs from family members for DNA tests.
“I keep praying for a miracle although logically, the plane has sunk in the ocean,” said Toni Priyono Adhi, whose daughter was on the flight. “But as a parent, I want a miracle,” he said.
A Reuters witness at the crash site saw about 60 divers scattered in inflatable boats over the slightly choppy waters, about 35 meters (115 feet) deep.
Sonar vessels and an underwater drone have been hunting for the wreckage of the fuselage, where many victims were feared trapped, officials said.
The head of a national transport safety panel, Soerjanto Tjahjono, said that underwater “pinger locators,” including equipment from Singapore, were being deployed to help find the aircraft’s black boxes.
Finding the cockpit voice recorder and flight data recorder are top priorities that will help determine the cause of the disaster, safety experts said.
“The visibility is not good as it’s very overcast,” a special forces officer commented.
Underwater footage released by the national search and rescue agency showed relatively poor visibility. In all, 35 vessels are helping to search for the victims.
The focus was initially on an area within five nautical miles of where the plane lost contact, but that was expanded to 10 miles on Tuesday and will be expanded to 15 on Wednesday, a search and rescue agency officer said.
So far only debris, personal items, including 52 identification cards and passports, and body parts have been found off the shore of the Karawang district, east of Jakarta.
Police said human remains were collected in 37 body bags after various sweeps of the site, roughly 15 km (nine miles) off the coast.
Most of those on board were Indonesian, but the airline has said an Italian passenger and Indian pilot were also on the plane.