FOR KING AND COUNTRY Airline to foot fatal crash bill

BUDGET HAMPERS SEARCH FOR ‘BLACK BOX’ Safety experts say it is unusual for one of the parties to help fund an investigation.

Bureaucratic wrangling and funding problems have hampered the search for the cockpit voice recorder of a crashed Lion Air jet, prompting investigators to turn to the airline to foot the bill in a rare test of global norms on the probe’s independence.

Weeks of delays in the search for the second “black box” may complicate the task of explaining how 189 people died when the Lion Air Boeing 737 MAX crashed into the Java Sea on October 29.

Indonesian investigators told Reuters budgetary constraints and the need for approvals had limited efforts to raise the main wreckage and find the cockpit voice recorder (CVR), thought to hold vital clues to Indonesia’s second-worst air disaster.

“We don’t have further funds to rent the ship,” a source at Indonesia’s transport safety committee (KNKT) said, in reference to specialised equipment needed for the search.

“There is no emergency fund for us, because there is no legal basis,” the source said, speaking on condition of anonymity.

“We have already asked the coordinating minister for the economy, but there is no regulation and it would need to be discussed by the parliament.”

The source said Lion Air’s insurers had been approached to pay the bill.

A source at Lion Air said its insurers had been reluctant to pay for the search and so the airline had stepped in.

The clock is ticking in the hunt for acoustic pings coming from the L3 Technologies Inc cockpit voice recorder fitted to the jet. It has a 90-day beacon, according to an online brochure from the manufacturer.

Safety experts say it is unusual for one of the parties to help fund an investigation. Under United Nations rules, such probes must be conducted independently to maintain trust in any recommendations made.

A rare exception was the costly search for black boxes of an Air France jet in the Atlantic in 2009, parts of which were funded by the airline and Airbus after a failed two-year effort.

The Lion Air jet crashed in relatively shallow water of 30m-35m but only the data recorder has been found as the remaining device lies among oil pipelines requiring an expensive self-positioning vessel without an anchor. –

Picture: EPA Guardsmen attend His Majesty The King’s Guard church parade in the Oslo Cathedral, in Oslo, Norway, on Tuesday. Norway’s King Harald and Crown Prince Haakon, both unseen, also took part.