All Boeing 737s to be inspected by Indonesia
Indonesia ordered the inspection of all Boeing 737 Max airliners on Tuesday as rescue teams recovered more victims from a brand-new Lion Air jet that plunged into the sea with 189 people on board.
On a Jakarta dockside, officials took up the grim task of separating human remains from aircraft debris to send them to hospital for DNA testing.
Stretched out along the dock was a growing collection of items plucked from the sea — single shoes, torn pieces of clothing, wallets and bags scattered among aircraft seats stripped of their blue covers by the sheer impact of the crash.
The Boeing 737 Max, which went into service just a few months ago, crashed into the Java Sea off Indonesia’s northern coast moments after it asked to return to Jakarta on Monday.
Flight JT610 sped up as it suddenly lost altitude and then vanished from radar 12 minutes after take-off, with witnesses saying it plunged into the water.
The accident has resurrected concerns about Indonesia’s patchy air safety record, which led to a ban on its aircraft entering US and European airspace. The ban has since been lifted.
On Tuesday Indonesia’s transport minister ordered an inspection of all 737 Max aircraft but he stopped short of grounding the new models.
There were 178 adult passengers, one child, two infants, two pilots and six crew on board. Scores of relatives thronged a hospital building being used for victim identification. Febby Mellysa had four relatives aboard the jet, including her cousin, his wife and their five-year-old son.
The country’s search-andrescue agency has all but ruled out finding any survivors from the high-impact crash in water about 30m-40m deep.
“We are prioritising finding the main wreckage of the plane using five war ships equipped with sonar,” said Yusuf Latif, spokesperson for the Indonesian search-and-rescue agency.
On Monday, Lion Air acknowledged the aircraft had an unspecified technical issue fixed in Bali before it was flown back to Jakarta, calling it “normal procedure”. Data from that flight suggested the aircraft may have flown erratically and a technical log circulating on social media pointed to different speed and altitude readings.