Monday, 23rd December 2024

Indonesian plane crash: Black boxes recovered

The Indonesian navy has found the two black boxes from the Sriwijaya Air Boeing 737 passenger plane that fell into the sea near the capital Jakarta with 62 people on board.

Monday, 11th January 2021

"Body Parts" Found At Indonesian Plane Crash Site, Say Investigators

The Indonesian navy has found the two black boxes from the Sriwijaya Air Boeing 737 passenger plane that fell into the sea near the capital Jakarta with 62 people on board.

It came after a navy ship caught a signal from the aircraft, and a diving team went down and found debris from the aircraft, some with identification numbers on them, according to a report from the Ministry of Transport.

"We have located the position of the black boxes," said Soerjanto Tjahjanto, head of a committee in the Ministry of Transport. "Divers will start looking for them and I hope it won't take long to recover them".

The search operation for the missing jet in the Java Sea was suspended overnight and resumed on Sunday morning.

The flight lost contact with all air traffic controllers on Saturday, minutes after taking off from Indonesia's money on a domestic flight.

Debris found by fishermen is being tested to see if it was from the missing plane, officials said.

Transportation Minister Budi Karya Sumadi said Flight SJ182 was delayed for an hour before it took off at 2.36 pm local time (8.36 am CET).

The Boeing 737-500 disappeared from radars four seconds later after the pilot contacted air traffic control to climb to an altitude of 8,839 meters, he said.

Flight tracker website FlightRadar24 showed SJ182 losing more than 10,000 feet of altitude in under a minute.

The airline said in a statement that the plane was on an expected 90-minute flight from Jakarta to Pontianak, the capital of West Kalimantan province on Indonesia's Borneo island.

The plane was carrying 50 tourists and 12 crew members, all Indonesian nationals, including six extra crew for another trip.

A dozen vessels, including four ships, were used in a search and rescue operation centered between Lancang island and Laki island, part of the Thousand Islands chain just northward of Jakarta, Sumadi said.

READ MORE NEWS HERE