Jakarta:
Body components, twisted wreckage and clothes have been plucked from waters off the Indonesian capital Sunday following a passenger jet with 62 folks aboard crashed shortly following take-off a day earlier.
Authorities have however to say why the Sriwijaya Air Boeing 737-500 went into a steep dive about 4 minutes following it left Soekarno-Hatta international airport on Saturday afternoon.
But, on Sunday, they mentioned that they had pinpointed the place of its black boxes — cockpit voice and flight information recorders — that could be essential to explaining why the plane slammed into the Java Sea off the sprawling city’s coast.
“Divers will start looking for them now and hopefully it won’t be long before we get them,” mentioned the head of Indonesia’s transport security agency, Soerjanto Tjahjono.
The search and rescue agency mentioned it had collected body bags filled with human remains, as effectively as debris from the wreckage, in waters about 23 metres (75 feet) deep.
Passengers Ihsan Adhlan Hakim and his new bride Putri have been headed to Pontianak, the city on Indonesia’s section of Borneo island which had been flight SJ182’s location, about 90 minutes away.
“He called me to say that the flight was delayed due to bad weather,” Hakim’s brother Arwin mentioned from Pontianak, exactly where a wedding celebration had been planned.
“That was the last time I had contact with him.”
– Steep dive –
Beben Sofian, 59, and her husband Dan Razanah, 58, have been also on the doomed flight.
“They took a selfie and sent it to their kids before taking off,” the couple’s nephew, Hendra, told AFP.
DNA from relatives will be compared with found remains for identification.
All 62 passengers and crew aboard the half-complete flight have been Indonesian. The count integrated 10 kids.
Distraught relatives waited nervously for news at Pontianak airport.
“I have four family members on the flight — my wife and three children,” mentioned a sobbing Yaman Zai.
“(My wife) sent me a picture of the baby… How could my heart not be torn into pieces?”
Data from FlightRadar24 indicated that the airliner reached an altitude of almost 11,000 feet (3,350 metres) prior to dropping all of a sudden to 250 feet. It then lost speak to with air site visitors manage.
The transport minister mentioned Saturday that the jet appeared to deviate from its intended course just prior to it disappeared from radar.
“The aircraft’s final moments are… very concerning as the speed that (it) was flying at that altitude was much lower than expected,” mentioned Stephen Wright, professor of aircraft systems at Finland’s Tampere University.
“The last seconds saw the aircraft rapidly descend from 10,000 feet to the sea in a matter of 20 seconds, which implies a catastrophic event or something deliberate.”
But he added that the crash can “only be fully explained once the black boxes and wreckage can be properly analysed”.
Sriwijaya Air, which operates flights to destinations in Indonesia and Southeast Asia, has mentioned tiny so far about the 26-year-old plane, which was previously flown by US-primarily based Continental Airlines and United Airlines.
The Indonesian carrier has not recorded a fatal crash due to the fact it began operations in 2003, but this accident is the most up-to-date in a string of disasters for the country’s aviation sector.
The Southeast Asia nation’s aviation sector has lengthy been marred by security issues, and its airlines have been as soon as banned from getting into US and European airspace.
– Safety issues –
In October 2018, 189 folks have been killed when a Lion Air Boeing 737 MAX jet crashed close to Jakarta.
That accident — and yet another in Ethiopia — saw Boeing hit with $2.5 billion in fines more than claims it defrauded regulators overseeing the 737 MAX model, which was grounded worldwide following the accidents.
The 737 that went down Saturday was not a MAX variant.
“Our thoughts are with the crew, passengers, and their families,” Boeing mentioned in a statement.
In 2014, an AirAsia plane headed from Surabaya to Singapore crashed with the loss of 162 lives.
A final report mentioned significant elements integrated a chronically faulty element in a rudder manage technique, poor upkeep, and the pilots’ inadequate response.
A year later more than 140 folks, which includes scores on the ground, have been killed when a military plane crashed shortly following take-off in Medan on Sumatra island.
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