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JAKARTA (Reuters) – Indonesia sent divers on Wednesday to search the sea around the crash site of an aircraft with 189 people on board, after detecting a signal that seems to reveal the truth. 39, location of the aircraft in the waters east of the capital, Jakarta.
The JT610 rescuers, who crashed with Lion Air, are sorting the newly recovered debris in Tanjung Priok harbor in Jakarta, Indonesia on October 30, 2018. REUTERS / Edgar Su
Ground personnel lost contact with Indonesian airline Lion Air flight JT610 13 minutes after the Boeing 737 MAX 8 took off from Jakarta on Monday, heading for the mining town of Pangkal Pinang.
On Wednesday, the Indonesian army chief said that he thought the plane had been found and a transport safety officer announced that divers would be sent to confirm the shipment of a "ping" signal by a search and rescue team on Tuesday night.
"We firmly believe that we have found some of the fuselage of the JT610," said Hadi Tjahjanto to TV broadcaster One, adding that the search team had location coordinates but now had to confirm that it was safe. It worked well on the plane.
Indonesia has deployed "pinger locators" in the aircraft's black box hunt, as the cockpit voice recorder and flight data recorder call it, on the site of the aircraft. accident.
"Yesterday afternoon, the team heard a" ping "sound 35 meters deep," Haryo Satmiko, deputy head of the national transportation safety committee, told Reuters, citing a depth of 115 feet. .
"This morning, at 5 o'clock in the morning, the team returned to dive on the scene."
Although it is almost certain that all the passengers on the plane are dead, the relatives are desperate to find the tracks of their dear ones. Only debris and body parts have been found to date.
"I continue to pray for a miracle, even though, logically, the plane sank in the ocean," said Toni Priyono Adhi, whose daughter was on board. "But as a parent, I want a miracle."
Dozens of relatives of the missing people gathered in a police hospital where funeral bags had been brought so that forensic experts could try to identify the victims, with techniques such as saliva tampon families for DNA testing.
Teams of divers deployed in search of the black boxes to understand why an almost new plane fell a few minutes after takeoff.
The search was expanded Wednesday to cover 15 nautical miles around the area where the plane lost contact, said a search and rescue officer, rising from 10 nautical miles Tuesday.
About 60 divers entered the sea on Tuesday from rubber boats scattered in slightly agitated waters, about 35 meters (115 feet) deep, a Reuters witness said on a boat on the site. accident. A total of 35 vessels were recruited for research.
Only debris, personal items, including 52 identity cards and passports, as well as body parts were found off the Indonesian district of Karawang, east of the capital, Jakarta.
President Joko Widodo visited the port of Jakarta to examine objects in a pile of debris spread over tarpaulins, from mutilated seats to uniforms for flight attendants, bags and shoes.
Officials said the human remains were collected in 37 body bags after sweeps on the site, about 15 km from the coast.
The investigators are investigating the reasons why the pilot of the aircraft shot down asked to return to the base shortly after takeoff, a request accepted by ground control officials, although the aircraft crashed little of time after.
A National Transportation Safety Committee official said that the plane had had technical problems during its previous flight Sunday, from the city of Denpasar on the seaside island of Bali, including a problem of " abnormal speed ".
The accident is the first to be reported involving the widely sold Boeing 737 MAX, an updated, energy efficient version of the manufacturer's single-aisle jet.
(For more details on the investigation, investigation of a crash, please click on tmsnrt.rs/2OZPYBz)
The private company Lion Air, founded in 1999, said the plane had been in service since the month of August and that it was airworthy. His pilot and co-pilot had 11,000 flying hours.
The airline will meet a Boeing team on Wednesday to discuss the fate of its 737 MAX 8 aircraft.
"We have a lot of questions for them," Lion Air director Daniel Putut told reporters on Tuesday. "It was a new plane."
Additional reports from the Jakarta office; Edited by Michael Perry
