Monitoring Desk

JAKARTA, Indonesia (AP) — The search for the black boxes of a crashed Sriwijaya Air jet intensified Monday to boost the investigation into what caused the plane carrying 62 people to nosedive at high velocity into the Java Sea.

The Boeing 737-500 jet disappeared minutes after taking off from Jakarta, Indonesia’s capital, during heavy rain on Saturday, and the search so far has yielded plane parts and human remains but no sign of survivors.

Authorities have said signals from the boxes containing the cockpit voice and flight data recorders were detected between Lancang and Laki islands in the Thousand Island chain just north of Jakarta’s coast. Officials said they have marked a location where the sounds were being emitted from the black boxes, which detached from the tail of the aircraft when it plummeted into the sea.

The cockpit voice recorder holds conversations between pilots, and the data recorder tracks electronic information such as airspeed, altitude and vertical acceleration. When found, they will be transported to port and handed to the National Transportation Safety Committee overseeing the crash investigation.

More than a dozen helicopters, 53 navy ships and 20 boats, and 2,600 rescue personnel have been searching since Sunday and have found parts of the plane in the water at a depth of 23 meters (75 feet), leading rescuers to continue searching the area.

Television footages showed landing gear, wheels and a jet engine among the parts found, while other rescuers brought a dozen body bags containing human remains to a police hospital in eastern Jakarta for the identification process.

The National Search and Rescue Agency chief Bagus Puruhito said divers using high-tech “ping locator” equipment were looking for an identified target beneath 20 meters (65 feet) of seabed mud.

The transport committee’s chairman, Soerjanto Tjahjono, said the black boxes could provide valuable information to investigators. Once the device is found and taken to the investigators’ facility, it will take three to five days to dry and clean the device and to download its data, Tjahjono said.

He said it need more time to analyze it, “depending on the complexity of the problem.”

The committee’s investigator Nurcahyo Utomo, said they have collected recordings and transcripts of the conversation between the pilot and air traffic controllers as part of their investigation into the cause of the crash.

Utomo said his team is still examining radar data on the plane’s movements and interviewed the air traffic officers who were in charge of controlling the crashed flight. More interviews of witnesses, including with the airlines’ technicians, fishermen and experts, will be done in the near future.

Investigators are investigating all parts of the plane found by searchers from the seafloor such as the Ground Proximity Warning System, a device that could warn the pilot if the plane is too close to the ground, a radio altimeter and several other parts mostly from the lower side of the aircraft’s tail, Utomo said.

He said that Singapore’s Transport Safety Investigation Bureau will help his committee in searching for the black boxes and the United States’ National Transportation Safety Board will join in investigating the crash.

Indonesia, the world’s largest archipelago nation, with more than 260 million people, has been plagued by transportation accidents on land, sea and air because of overcrowding on ferries, aging infrastructure and poorly enforced safety standards.

In October 2018, a Boeing 737 MAX 8 jet operated by Lion Air plunged into the Java Sea just minutes after taking off from Jakarta, killing all 189 people on board. The plane involved in Saturday’s disaster did not have the automated flight-control system that played a role in the Lion Air crash and another crash of a 737 MAX 8 jet in Ethiopia five months later, leading to the grounding of the MAX 8 for 20 months.

The Lion Air crash was Indonesia’s worst airline disaster since 1997, when 234 people were killed on a Garuda airlines flight near Medan on Sumatra island. In December 2014, an AirAsia flight from the Indonesian city of Surabaya to Singapore plunged into the sea, killing 162 people.

Sriwijaya Air has had only minor incidents in the past, though a farmer was killed in 2008 when a plane went off the runway while landing due to a hydraulic issue.

The United States banned Indonesian carriers from operating in the country in 2007, but reversed the decision in 2016, citing improvements in compliance with international aviation standards. The European Union has previously had similar bans, lifting them in June 2018.

Why Indonesia’s plane safety record is a concern

JAKARTA, Indonesia (AP) — Saturday’s plane crash in Indonesia, in which a Sriwijaya Air carrying 62 people plunged into the Java Sea shortly after takeoff, has once again cast the limelight on the safety of the country’s aviation industry.

Indonesia’s aviation record is one of the worst in Asia, with more civilian airliner passenger accidents since 1945 than any other country in the region. Past accidents have been attributed to poor pilot training, mechanical failures, air traffic control issues and poor aircraft maintenance.

While experts say there have been many improvements in recent years, the latest crash has experts questioning the true progress of Indonesia’s aviation oversight and regulation.

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WHY HAS INDONESIA HAD SO MANY PLANE CRASHES?

It’s due to a combination of economic, social and geographical factors.

The industry had little regulation or oversight in the early years of Indonesia’s aviation boom, after the economy was opened following the fall of Suharto in the late 1990s and end of decades of dictatorships.

Low-cost air carriers bloomed and flying became a common way for people to travel across the vast archipelago nation where many areas still lack efficient or safe transportation infrastructure.

According to data from the Aviation Safety Network, Indonesia has had 104 civilian airliner accidents with over 1,300 related fatalities since 1945, ranking it as the most dangerous place to fly in Asia.

The United States banned Indonesian carriers from operating in the country from 2007 to 2016 because they were “deficient in one or more areas, such as technical expertise, trained personnel, record-keeping or inspection procedures.” The European Union had a similar ban from 2007 until 2018.

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HAVE THINGS IMPROVED?

Yes, they have.

“Engagement with the industry has significantly improved and oversight has become more rigorous,” aviation expert and editor-in-chief of AirlineRatings.com Geoffrey Thomas told The Associated Press.

That includes more frequent inspections, stronger regulation of maintenance facilities and procedures, and better pilot training, he said.

The U.S. Federal Aviation Administration granted Indonesia a Category 1 rating in 2016, meaning it determined that the country complied with International Civil Aviation Organization safety standards.

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WHY DID THE LATEST CRASH HAPPEN?

It’s too soon to tell. The plane left from Jakarta during heavy rain, but experts said poor weather was among several possible reasons, including human error and the plane’s condition.

Fishermen in the vicinity of the crash said they heard an explosion, followed by debris and fuel surrounding their boat. But heavy rain impaired their vision and they were unable to see much more.

Sriwijaya Air has had only minor incidents in the past, though a farmer was killed in 2008 when one of its planes went off the runway while landing due to a hydraulic issue.

The airline’s president director, Jefferson Irwin Jauwena, said the plane that crashed was airworthy. It was a Boeing 737-500 that was 26 years old and had previously been flown by airlines in the United States. He told reporters the plane was flown earlier in the same day of the crash.

But experts said an investigation is needed to determine whether the plane was in fact fit to fly.

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WHEN WILL WE KNOW MORE?

Plane parts are among the debris being recovered from the water and could provide insight. The location of the black boxes in seabed mud has been identified, and divers and others are working to retrieve the flight data recorder and cockpit voice recorder from the sea.

But the investigation could take weeks, likely months, said Indonesian aviation consultant Gerry Soejatman.

Indonesia is expected to lead the investigation, with international observers typically welcomed as well. There should be an interim report from Indonesia’s National Transportation Safety Committee within a month, Soejatman said.

“The analysis will start with that report,” he said.

Courtesy: AP News