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Human remains and debris were removed from the crash site, and the commander of the Indonesian National Armed Forces, Marshal Hadi Tjahjanto, said Sunday night that they are “receiving two signals from the black box and continuing to monitor it.” He added that he hoped to retrieve it soon from the seabed, 23 meters (about 75 feet) below the surface.
The head of the National Transportation Safety Committee (NTSC), Suryanto Cahyono, also said that he was sure that experts had located the position of the black box and had delivered “portable ping detection devices to the Navy divers. so they can find it. “
Sriwijaya Air Flight 182, a Boeing 737-500, was heading from Jakarta to the city of Pontianak, on the Indonesian side of Borneo, when it lost contact at 2:40 p.m. local time (2:40 a.m. ET). 11 nautical miles north of Jakarta’s Soekarno-Hatta International Airport.
Within four minutes into the flight, and amid heavy rain, the plane fell 10,000 feet in less than a minute before disappearing from radar, according to global flight tracking service Flightradar24.
Commander Fajar Rohadi, a spokesman for the Indonesian Navy’s First Fleet, told CNN on Sunday that the Navy had not yet recovered the large fuselage structure, but had recovered human body parts and aircraft parts.
So far, five body bags with accident victims located by the National Search and Rescue Agency (Basarnas) have been handed over to the Jakarta-based disaster victims investigation unit for identification, according to the mission coordinator, Rasman MS.
Aviation disaster investigators have obtained communications data from air traffic control and the pilot, according to Capt. Ray Nurcahyo, an NTSC investigator.
Three NTSC investigators are at the scene with search and rescue teams. So far, they have recovered some components and instruments from the flight, including the Ground Proximity Warning System, radio altimeter, emergency landing support and the tail of the plane.
The US National Transportation Safety Board has assigned Michael Hauff, its accredited air accident expert, to fly to Indonesia to investigate.
Rescue operations continue around the clock, but the divers stopped the search overnight and will resume on Monday morning.
A command post set up at the Kramat Jati Police Hospital in Jakarta to identify accident victims and search for their families was working to identify the remains, Tjahjanto said.
The focus of the search is between the islands of Laki and Lancang, known as the Thousand Islands chain, about 20 miles northwest of Jakarta. Some 28 ships, five helicopters and two aircraft have been deployed in a joint effort between the Indonesian Navy, Police, Coast Guard and Ministry of Transport.
Prayers for the victims
The divers recovered pieces of debris from the site that are the same color as the Sriwijaya Air plane, Air Chief Marshal Tjahjanto said at a news conference from the warship John Lie.
An aircraft registration number, landing gear wheels and life jackets were also discovered, Tjahjanto said, adding that visibility and conditions in the water were good.
“We sent two investigators from the Indonesian Search and Rescue Agency out to sea to conduct a location study. We need to find more information about the location, for example to determine what equipment we are going to use in relation to the underwater terrain we have,” Suryanto Cahyono told CNN.
On Sunday, Indonesian President Joko Widodo offered his condolences and urged people to pray for the accident victims.
“We will do everything possible to find and save the victims, and together, we pray that they can be found,” he said at the Presidential Palace, according to Reuters. “On behalf of the Indonesian government and people, we would like to express our condolences for what happened.”
The missing plane was carrying 50 passengers, 43 adults and 7 children, as well as 12 crew members, according to Indonesia’s Transport Minister Budi Karya Sumadi. He extended his condolences for those who died in the incident.
Family members have been gathering at the victim identification center in Jakarta, waiting for news of their loved ones.
A family of five is missing and feared dead, according to a family aunt who spoke to CNN. The family released a statement saying that the father, 26-year-old Rizki Wahyudi who worked for the Indonesian Forestry Commission, his 26-year-old wife Indah Halimah Putri, their 7-month-old son, as well as his mother and cousin, were on the flight. that crashed.
The married couple Muhammad Nur Kholifatul Amin and his wife Agus Minarni were also on board the crashed flight, according to the brother of one of the victims who spoke to CNN.
Fisherman heard explosion
Three Lancang Island fishermen told CNN they heard an explosion and experienced a sudden large wave around the time the plane disappeared.
“I heard a very loud explosion. I thought it was a bomb or a big thunderbolt. Then we saw the big wave, about 2 meters high, hitting our boat,” Hendrik Mulyadi said.
Hendrik’s colleague Solihin described the sound as “a bomb in water.” They said it was dark and raining at the time.
The men said they did not see a plane crash into the sea, but they smelled fuel and detected debris. The men said they returned to shore to report what they experienced to police.
The plane, registered PK CLC, was a 26-year-old Boeing 737-500, according to Flightradar24. Sriwijaya Airlines CEO Jefferson Irwin Jauwena said the plane was in good condition before taking off.
In a statement, Boeing said: “Our thoughts are with the crew, passengers and their families. We are in contact with our airline’s customer and we are ready to support them during this difficult time.”
Sriwijaya Air, a low-cost carrier and Indonesia’s third-largest airline, carries more than 950,000 passengers per month from its central Jakarta to 53 destinations within Indonesia and three regional countries, according to the company’s website.
In June 2018, it was removed from the European Union’s list of banned airlines, 11 years after its inclusion on that list.
Accident history
This weekend’s accident is the latest to affect Indonesia’s burgeoning airline industry.
In 2014, Indonesia’s AirAsia Flight 8501 claimed the lives of 162 people on board after crashing into the Java Sea while flying from Surabaya to Singapore.
And in the year before that, Lion Air was involved in two accidents. A Boeing 737 lost the runway on landing and crashed into the sea near Bali, forcing passengers to swim or wade to safety, while another Boeing 737 collided with a cow while landing at Jalaluddin Airport in Gorontalo. on the island of Sulawesi.
In 2007, the European Union banned all 51 Indonesian airlines from its airspace after a Garuda Indonesia plane with 140 people on board left the Yogyakarta runway in March and burst into flames, killing 21 people in board.
Indonesia, an archipelago nation of more than 13,000 islands, has seen a boom in domestic aviation in recent years, with passenger traffic tripling between 2005 and 2017, according to Australian consultancy CAPA-Center for Aviation.
The country of 270 million people relies heavily on air travel to travel between the islands of the archipelago, which stretches for more than 3,000 miles – roughly the same distance between London and New York.
Yosef Riadi reported from Pontianak and Jamaluddin Masrur reported from Jakarta. CNN’s Helen Regan, Jonny Hallam, Lynn Franco, Kara Fox and Angela Dewan contributed to this report.
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