Jakarta:
The cockpit voice recorder from a crashed Indonesian jet has been retrieved in “good condition”, officials stated today, more than two months following the airliner plunged into the sea killing all 62 passengers and crew.
The CVR records flight crew conversations and could present essential clues about why the Sriwijaya Air Boeing 737-500 dived about 3,000 metres (10,000 feet) into waters off Jakarta just minutes following takeoff on January 9.
The jet’s flight information recorder, which holds data about the speed, altitude and path of the plane, was earlier plucked from the wreckage-littered Java Sea.
Authorities stated Wednesday that the voice recorder unit was in superior situation, in spite of possessing been in the water for months.
“So we’re confident that we will be able to download its data,” stated Soerjanto Tjahjono, head of Indonesia’s National Transportation Safety Committee.
Investigators want to mine the recorder in the hopes of finding out what the crew was saying when the flight from the capital to Pontianak in Borneo went down.
Cockpit voice and flight information recorders are identified as black boxes and enable clarify almost 90 % of all crashes, according to aviation professionals.
The voice device was discovered Tuesday evening on the final day of an operation that applied dredging gear to comb the muddy seabed, following the dive search failed to find it, they stated.
“It was like trying to find a needle in a haystack,” Tjahjono told reporters earlier Wednesday.
“But without the CVR, it would be very difficult to find the cause of the Sriwijaya Air accident.”
A preliminary report final month into the crash stated crews on preceding flights had described the jet’s throttle method as “unserviceable” and that it had been repaired numerous instances prior to its fatal final flight.
The report stated a catastrophic throttle malfunction and doable human error have been amongst the aspects becoming regarded.
But investigators had stated it was as well early to pinpoint a trigger.
The 737 had sharply deviated from its intended course just prior to its plunge.
Despite appeals from air targeted traffic controllers, the crew — which includes an knowledgeable captain — did not respond to inquiries about the sudden transform of path.
The 26-year-old plane was flown by US-based Continental Airlines and United Airlines prior to it was bought by Sriwijaya, which flies to destinations in Indonesia and across Southeast Asia.
Indonesia, a vast archipelago that relies heavily on air transport to connect its thousands of islands, has suffered a string of deadly plane crashes in current years.
In October 2018, 189 individuals have been killed when a Boeing 737 MAX jet with Lion Air plunged into the sea.
That accident — and a different in Ethiopia — led to the worldwide grounding of the 737 MAX more than a faulty anti-stall method.
The 737 that crashed in January was not a MAX variant.
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