Gulf News

Indonesia closes in on location of doomed jet’s black box

AUTHORITIE­S PICKED UP THE DEVICE’S SIGNALS SOME 30-40M BELOW SURFACE OF WATER

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Indonesian investigat­ors said they were homing in on the black box from a crashed jetliner after locating its “pings” yesterday, two days after the jet crashed shortly after take-off with 189 people on board.

Retrieving the black box will be key to unlocking why the Boeing 737-MAX, one of the world’s newest and most advanced commercial passenger jets, nosedived into the Java Sea so soon after leaving Jakarta.

Authoritie­s picked up the box’s signals some 30-40 metres below the surface of the water off Indonesia’s north coast, where the plane crashed Monday.

“We have not found the black box’s location, but it’s in the area, within a three-kilometre radius,” Soerjanto Tjahjono, head of Indonesia’s National Transporta­tion Safety Committee, told Kompas TV. “Usually the black box location is near the main wreckage.”

The box contains flight data that shows the speed, altitude and direction of the plane, while the cockpit voice recorder keeps track of conversati­ons and other sounds in the cockpit.

Temporary removal

Dozens of divers were taking part in the 1,000-strong personnel recovery effort along with helicopter­s and ships, but authoritie­s have all but ruled out finding any survivors.

The developmen­t comes as Boeing officials were due to meet with Lion Air yesterday, after Indonesia ordered an inspection of the US plane maker’s 737-MAX jets.

Indonesia’s transport minister Budi Karya Sumadi took the unusual step of ordering the temporary removal of Lion Air’s technical director and several other staff who cleared the flight, citing government authority over the aviation sector.

He later stressed that the measure meant to free up the technical director to help with the crash probe. Aviation experts say it is too early to determine what caused the accident.

Technical issue

But Lion’s admission that the plane had an unspecifie­d technical issue on a previous flight — as well as the plane’s abrupt nosedive just 12 minutes after take-off — have raised questions about whether it had any faults specific to the newly released model, including a speed-and-altitude system malfunctio­n. “The bigger picture here is that you’ve got a lot of American carriers flying the same aircraft,” Stephen Wright, aviation expert at the University of Leeds, told AFP.

“Is there [a problem] that could affect other aircraft?”

The crash has also resurrecte­d concerns about Indonesia’s patchy air safety record which led to a now-lifted ban on its planes entering US and European airspace.

 ?? Reuters ?? Families of passengers of Lion Air flight JT610 look at the belongings of the passengers at Tanjung Priok port in Jakarta, Indonesia, yesterday. The jet with 189 passengers crashed on Monday.
Reuters Families of passengers of Lion Air flight JT610 look at the belongings of the passengers at Tanjung Priok port in Jakarta, Indonesia, yesterday. The jet with 189 passengers crashed on Monday.

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