Flight systems ‘functioning’ before impact
JAKARTA: An early investigation by the Indonesian transportation safety body showed yesterday that the flight system of a Boeing 737-500 jetliner with 62 people on board that crashed in the sea off Jakarta was functioning during the impact.
Data of Sriwijaya Air Flight SJ182 that had been recorded until the plane descended to 76.3 metres above the water’s surface before the crash on Saturday have “indicated that the flight system was functioning and able to send data”, according to Soerjanto Tjahjono, chief of the National Transportation
Safety Committee.
“Based on this, we suspect that the engines were still working just before it crashed into the sea,” he added.
The safety board chief also said field data have shown the pieces of the plane’s wreckage found by rescuers only covered a 40-square-kilometre area, supporting “our hypothesis that the plane didn’t explode when touching the water”.
The aircraft took off from Jakarta’s Soekarno-Hatta International Airport at 2.36pm on Saturday, heading to the West Kalimantan provincial capital of
Pontianak, and a minute later requested to ascend to 29,000 feet (8,839 metres).
However, at 2.40pm air traffic control asked the pilot why the plane was heading northwest instead of on its expected path. A few seconds later, it disappeared from radar.
Flight tracking website Flightradar24 showed that after taking off, the plane climbed to 10,900 feet in approximately four minutes, but then went into a steep descent over the next 21 seconds, with the last received data placing it at 250 feet from the water’s surface.
The preliminary findings were issued as the search for victims and wreckage of the aircraft continued on the fourth day, focusing on a 90sqm area where a locator beacon has caught signals from flight data recorders, believed to be buried under the plane’s debris.
On Tuesday, about 3,600 rescuers, 13 planes and 54 ships were deployed to recover human remains believed to be those of the plane’s passengers as well as suspected debris from the aircraft.
No survivors have been found. Among the 62 people on board the plane were 10 children, including three infants, and 12 crew members.