Investigators locate black boxes from plane crash off Indonesia
Navy ship sonar system picked up signals from downed aircraft
JAKARTA, Indonesia — Authorities said they determined the location of the crash site and black boxes of a Boeing 737-500 on Sunday, a day after the aircraft crashed into the Java Sea with 62 people on board shortly after taking off from Indonesia’s capital.
The head of Indonesia’s National Search and Rescue Agency, Bagus Puruhito, said officials believe they identified the location of the flight data recorder and cockpit voice recorder — the so-called black boxes — because emergency signals transmitted by the devices were detected by a navy ship’s sonar system.
“Hopefully we can lift the black boxes in a short time to determine the cause of the crash,” military chief Hadi Tjahjanto said.
Earlier Sunday, search and rescue personnel found parts of the plane 75 feet below sea level, leading rescuers to continue searching the area.
“We received reports from the diver team that the visibility in the water is good and clear, allowing the discovery of some parts of the plane,” Tjahjanto said in a statement. “We are sure that is the point where the plane crashed.”
He said the objects found included broken pieces of fuselage with aircraft registration parts.
Earlier, rescuers pulled out body parts, pieces of children’s clothing and scraps of metal from the surface.
The break in the search for Sriwijaya Air Flight 182 came after the navy ship’s sonar equipment detected a signal from the aircraft at a location that fit the coordinates from the pilots’ last contact before the plane disappeared Saturday afternoon, Tjahjanto said.
The plane was en route from Jakarta to Pontianak, the capital of West Kalimantan province on Indonesia’s Borneo island, on a flight that was expected to take around 90 minutes. There was no sign of survivors. There were 62 people on board, all of them Indonesian nationals, including three babies and seven other children. The plane was carrying 50 passengers, six working crew members and six other crew for another flight.
“Our thoughts are with the crew, passengers, and their families,” Boeing said in a statement. “We are in contact with our airline customer and stand ready to support them during this difficult time.”
Authorities established two crisis centers, where families gathered to wait for news about their loved ones.