Parts of cockpit recorder found in Java Sea search | Alds

An expanded recovery effort now involving around 4000 search and rescue personnel has so far recovered the flight data recorder and parts of the cockpit voice recorder (CVR), including its casing, but the most important part is still missing.

“We’ve found the (CVR) body or casing, we’ve found the beacon and now we’re looking for the memory,” officer Abdul Rasyid said, according to Reuters.

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Sriwijaya Air Flight SJ62 took off late after being delayed by heavy rain, with 62 people on board the 26-year-old jet when it plummeted into the sea from a height of three kilometres.

Indonesia’s National Transportation Safety Committee has downloaded information from the “black box” flight data recorder recovered on Tuesday.

“(It’s) all in good condition and we’re now examining the data,” Committee head Soerjanto Tjahjono said in a statement.

Authorities said the crew did not declare an emergency or report technical problems with the plane before its dive.

They don’t believe there was any mid-air explosion and think the plane was probably intact when it hit the water — citing a relatively small area where the wreckage was scattered.

The crash probe is likely to take months, but a preliminary report is expected in 30 days.

Indonesia’s fast-growing aviation sector has long been plagued by safety concerns, and its airlines were once banned from US and European airspace.

In October 2018, 189 people were killed when a Lion Air Boeing 737 MAX jet crashed near Jakarta.

That accident — and another in Ethiopia — led to the grounding of the 737 MAX worldwide over a faulty anti-stall system.

The 737 that went down last Saturday was first produced decades ago and was not a MAX variant.

— with AFP