Divers have located parts of the wreckage of Sriwijaya Air Flight SJ182 and have collected the black boxes. The Cockpit Voice Recorder and Flight Data Recorder were found in two locations on the seabed. The plane crashed into the sea 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.
The Boeing 737-500 departed from Jakarta heading for Pontianak on Saturday, but crashed into the sea within minutes of take-off.
The cockpit voice recorder holds conversations between pilots, and the data recorder tracks electronic information such as airspeed, altitude and vertical acceleration. They will be handed over 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 metres (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 US National Transportation Safety Board has sent an aircraft crash expert to assist with the investigation.
The crash site is close to Laki Island in the Pulau Seribu (Thousand Island) archipelago just 20 miles north of Jakarta, which is a popular weekend holiday spot for the city’s residents.
The plane was carrying 50 passengers and a dozen crew members, Indonesia’s Minister of Transportation Budi Karya Sumadi said.
Officials are keeping tight-lipped about the possible cause of the accident until flight data and voice recordings are fully analysed.
The transport committee’s chairman, Soerjanto Tjahjono, ruled out a possible midair breakup after seeing the condition of the wreckage found by searchers.
He said the jet was intact when it plunged and it broke into pieces upon the impact with the water. The debris was concentrated in one area, while a midair explosion would have caused debris to be spread over a large area, he said.
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.