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JAKARTA (Reuters) – An Indonesian diver died following a search operation on a plane that crashed earlier this week near Jakarta, killing 189 people on board, the airline said on Saturday. Search and rescue agency (Basarnas).
Debris is seen on the seabed in the air search area of JT610 flight of Lion Air, Indonesia, November 2, 2018, in this still image extracted from a video obtained from social media. Basarnas / via REUTERS
Syachrul Anto, 48, died Friday while plunking to search for victims of the aircraft crashed Lion Air, the agency said Saturday.
"We would like to express our deepest condolences for the death of a humanitarian hero of the Indonesian diving rescue team," said Basarnas chief Muhammad Syaugi in a press release.
We did not know immediately how Anto had perished. Anto's family chose not to perform an autopsy and asked that his remains be buried immediately, Basamas spokesman Yusuf Latif told Reuters.
Among other missions, Anto was also one of the major divers involved in the search for an AirAsia aircraft that crashed off Borneo late 2014.
Rescue divers played a crucial role in recovering the human remains and pieces of the almost new Boeing Co. 737 MAX, which sank and crashed into the sea early Monday, 13 minutes after takeoff. Jakarta.
As of Saturday, 73 body bags, some with intact remains, had been found, but only four of the victims had been identified.
Divers looked for a second black box in a muddy black background, while investigators were trying to recover data from a partially damaged recorder retrieved Thursday.
The pilot of JT610 had requested and obtained permission to return to Jakarta, but what went wrong remains a mystery.
"The team has heard the sound of" ping "in another black box for two days," told Reuters Soerjanto Tjahjono, head of the committee on transport safety (KNKT).
The sea is only 30 m deep at the crash site, but strong currents and nearby pipelines have impeded the search.
Visiting Joko Widodo at the search operations headquarters in Jakarta harbor on Friday, he thanked the relief workers and the military involved and urged them to step up the search.
"I ask you to use all your strengths, all available technology, to work quickly to find something else," he said.
The families of the victims are desperate to find out what happened, but the investigation into the first crash of a Boeing 737 MAX is also being scrutinized by the global aviation industry. The findings of the preliminary inquiry should be made public after 30 days.
Indonesia is one of the fastest growing aviation markets in the world, but its safety performance is uneven. Its transport safety group investigated 137 serious aeronautical incidents between 2012 and 2017.
"We still have a long way to go," said Air Transport Director Pramintohadi Sukarno at a press conference on Saturday, referring to the safety rules.
Written by Fergus Jensen; Edited by Kim Coghill
