Divers find parts of plane wreckage in Java Sea
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 crashedinto 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, BagusPuruhito, 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 deviceswere detected by a navy ship’s sonar system.
“Hopefullywe can lift the black boxes in short time to determine the cause of the crash,” military chief Hadi Tjahjanto said.
Earlier Sunday, search and rescue operations resulted in parts of the plane being found in the sea at a depth of 75 feet, leading rescuers to continue searching the area.
“We receivedreports 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 pointwhere the plane crashed.”
He said the objects found included broken pieces of fuselage with aircraft registration parts.
Earlier, rescuers pulledout 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 fromthe last contact madeby the pilots before the plane disappeared Saturday afternoon, Tjahjanto said.
The plane was en route from Jakarta to Pontianak, the capital ofWest Kalimantan province on Indonesia’s
Borneo island, on a flight that was expected to take around 90 minutes.
It was still unclear what caused it to crash. Therewas no sign of survivors.
“I represent the government and all Indonesians in expressingmy deep condolences for this tragedy,” Indonesian President Joko Widodo said.
“We are doing our best to save the victims. We pray together so that the victims can be found,” he said, adding that he had asked the National Transport Safety Committee to conduct an investigation.
Fishermen in the area between Lancang and Laki islands, part of an archipelago around Thousand Islands north of Jakarta’s coast, reported hearing an explosion around 2:30 p.m. Saturday.
“We heard something explode — we thought it was a bomb or a tsunami since after thatwe sawa big splash fromthe water,” Solihin, who goes by one name, said by phone.