Lion Air black box search ends as Indonesia plans own probe

JAKARTA: Lion Air has ended its search for the cockpit voice recorder (CVR) from its Boeing 737 MAX jet that crashed into the Java Sea in October, but Indonesian investigators said they plan to launch their own probe as soon as possible.

The crash, the world’s first of a Boeing 737 MAX jet and the deadliest of 2018, killed all 189 people on board.

Contact with flight JT610 was lost 13 minutes after it took off on Oct 29 from the capital Jakarta heading north to the tin-mining town of Pangkal Pinang.

The main wreckage and the CVR, one of two so-called black boxes, were not recovered in an initial search. Lion Air said in December it was funding a 38 billion rupiah (RM11mil) search using the offshore supply ship MPV Everest.

The search using the ship ended on Saturday, Danang Mandala, the spokesman for Lion Air Group, said.

A spokesman for the National Transportation Safety Commission (KNKT), however, said yesterday the agency would start its own search for the black box as soon as feasible.

The CVR is likely to hold vital clues that could give investigators insight into the actions of the pilots.

The KNKT spokesman said negotiations with the Indonesian navy were under way to use a navy ship to relaunch the search for the second black box as soon as possible.

“It might be as soon as next week. It won’t be as fancy as the (Lionsubsidised) MPV Everest but will be equipped with a CVR detector and we have a remote-operated vehicle,” the commission’s spokesman said.

The clock is ticking in the hunt for acoustic pings from the L3 Technologies Inc CVR fitted to the jet. It has a 90-day beacon, the manufacturer’s online brochure shows.

A preliminary report by KNKT focused on airline maintenance and training and the response of a Boeing anti-stall system to a recently replaced sensor but did not give a cause for the crash. “While we appreciate the fact Lion Air Group brought out the MPV Everest ship, we are disappointed because there’s no actual results,” Anton Sahadi, a relative of a victim of the plane crash, told Reuters by a text message.

“It has been a waste of money, of time and of a sophisticated ship ... for several weeks, we the families of victims were given only fake promises by Lion Air,” he said, adding that he was not confident in the government’s efforts.