Indonesia: black box from crashed jet retrieved

Jakarta (VNA) – A black box of the Lion Air plane that went down in waters off West Java province of Indonesia on October 29 were retrieved on November 1.

The box was found among debris in the mud on the sea floor, at a depth of 32.5m, said Hendra, one of the divers participating in the search, told broadcaster Metro TV.

It was orange in colour and intact, he said, without specifying if the item was the flight data recorder or the cockpit voice recorder.

Soerjanto Tjahjono, head of the National Transportation Safety Committee, said a preliminary accident investigation report should be released within a month and the final report could take 4-6 months.

The jet, a Boeing 737 MAX 8, was en route from Jakarta to Pangkakpinang in Bangka Belitung province off Sumatra island. It lost contact with air traffic control just 13 minutes after takeoff.

According to the National Search and Rescue Agency (Basarnas), the total number of people on the plane was 189, including two pilots and six flight attendants.

However, all of them may have been dead and rescue forces have found many body parts of the victims. 

The incident is reported to be the first major accident involving a Boeing 737 Max - an updated version of the 737.

The Lion Air crash is the worst airline disaster in Indonesia since 1997, when 234 people died on a Garuda flight near Medan.-VNA