Air Lion crash: no answers on the cause of an air disaster while bodies are removed from the sea



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Divers and rescue crews were working Tuesday to bring the remains of passengers out of the water, while investigators examined fragments of debris scattered over a wide expanse of sea.

The flight data recorders and aircraft fuselage have not yet been recovered, which should provide further evidence of what caused the crash of the flight about 13 minutes after takeoff of the aircraft. a routine flight that should take a little over an hour.

Police said Monday night that 24 body bags had been transferred from the accident to a local hospital for a post mortem examination. DNA samples were taken from 132 family members of passengers on board to facilitate identification, but the Jakarta police commissioner warned that it could be difficult and that each mortuary bag transferred up to ## 147 ## 39 may now contain the remains of several people.

A family member, Keshia Aurelia, aged 14, was in high school when she heard the news of her mother, Fifi Hajanto, in the plane at the time of the fall.

"We cried a lot in the crisis center while waiting for the authorities," she told CNN. "All the families were crying, I'm not the only one to suffer, so I have to be strong."

"My mother was a very nice person," added Aurelia. "I do not understand why (it happened)."

Fifi Hajanto (right), 42, was aboard Lion Air Flight 610 when he was shot dead, said his daughter Keshia Aurelia (pictured left with her mother and brother) at CNN.

The cause of the accident remains a mystery

The aircraft, a new Boeing 737 MAX 8, was carrying 181 passengers, as well as six cabin crew members and two pilots, bound for Pangkal Pinang on the Indonesian island of Bangka.

He asked the air traffic control to return to the airport about 19 kilometers (12 miles) after take-off, but did not indicate that there was an emergency.

The radar data did not show that the plane had turned around and the air traffic controllers had lost touch with him soon afterwards, AirNav Indonesia spokesman CNN Yohanes Sirait told reporters. agency that oversees air navigation.

David Soucie, a former safety inspector with the US Federal Aviation Administration, said that the fact that an emergency is not declared should be a cause for concern.

"What sets me apart the most is the fact that they did not declare an emergency, they just said," we're coming home, "said Soucie, a security analyst at CNN. .

"But when I look at the trajectory of the plane after that, the plane did a very steep dive after what was not typical of what it would have done," he said. he added. "They would have maintained the altitude, made this turn and returned to (the airport)."

The plane had reported problems the previous night on a flight linking Denpasar to Jakarta, but engineers had checked and repaired the problem and gave permission to the aircraft, said Lion's general manager Air, Edward Sirait, to the local media.

AirNav Indonesia said the flight would have been a priority landing point if it had declared the state of emergency.

"Something happened to lose control of this plane," said Soucie.

He, however, ruled out bad weather as the cause of the crash, as the plane did not seem to want to turn back to Jakarta. "That says something abrupt and very fast happened to the plane."

Although the flight data recorder and the cockpit voice recorder – the so-called "black boxes" – have not yet been found, Soucie warned that location transmitters emergency on the black boxes are somewhat unreliable and could be undetectable, with Malaysian Airlines' MH370 flight missing.

"When this plane breaks down, the first thing you find is these boxes, and if the signal that indicates where they are located is not working or is not designed properly, it's a big problem" , did he declare. "It's even more of a systemic problem than it is a particular plane."

Black boxes usually provide information on the causes of the accident and the last minutes of the flight.

A family member of the passengers then asks that she and others wait for news from the Air Lion plane.

New plane

According to India's National Transportation Safety Committee (NTSC), Lion Air acquired the Boeing 737 MAX 8 in August and the flight lasted only 800 hours.

The aircraft is one of Boeing's newest and most advanced aircraft, one of 11 aircraft of this type in the Lion Air fleet. In a statement, Boeing said the company was "deeply saddened" by the loss and offered "its deepest sympathy" to the passengers and crew on board, as well as to their families.

Soucie said that 800 hours, it was ample time "to get what has been proven".

He added that the MAX 8 was "the high end, it's one of the best you can buy … I see nothing coming back to the maintenance on this issue nor the theft of the l & # 39; 39, plane itself ".

Peter Goelz, CNN Analyst for Civil Aviation, agreed that the loss of such a new aircraft was "extremely unusual".

But as the pilot and co-pilot of the Lion Air aircraft were experienced – respectively 6,000 and 5,000 flight hours – and the weather did not seem to be a determining factor, the investigators would focus on the aircraft said Goelz, former president of the United States. National Transportation Safety Board.

An image released by Indonesian rescue agents of debris extracted from the water.

Indonesia: poor record on security

Attention will also be focused on the overall safety record of the Indonesian aviation industry, which has been lagging behind other countries in the region for a long time.

Lion Air is one of Boeing's newest and most advanced aircraft

Following the accident, Australia advised its government officials and subcontractors not to fly Lion Air, a government official told CNN.

Lion Air was one of dozens of Indonesian carriers banned from access to European airspace in 2007, as a result of a series of accidents and concerns over declining safety standards .

In the same year, a Garuda Indonesia plane with 140 people aboard overran the runway of the Indonesian city of Yogyakarta and caught fire, leaving 21 dead on board.
The accident was part of a litany of accidents involving Indonesian airlines since 2000, including several involving Lion Air.
In 2013, a Lion Air Boeing 737 missed the runway and crashed into the sea near Bali, forcing passengers to swim up to safety. The same year, another Lion Air Boeing 737 collided with a cow while landing at Jalaluddin Airport in Gorontalo.
Others have not been so lucky. In 2014, Indonesian flight 8501 AirAsia crashed into the Karimata Strait while flying from Surabaya to Singapore, killing the 162 people on board.
However, standards have improved since then and major carriers – including Lion Air – have been phased out over the years. All remaining Indonesian airlines on the list were cleared earlier this year.

A similar ban preventing Indonesian carriers from entering US airspace was lifted in 2016.

Soucie, who has been involved in several of the investigations that resulted in Indonesia's customs clearance, said the 2007 ban was more tied to the "Indonesian government and its commitment to security than vis-à-vis -vis of a particular airline ".

Indonesia, an archipelago country of more than 13,000 islands, has seen the rise of domestic aviation in recent years. Passenger traffic tripled between 2005 and 2017, according to the Australian consultant CAPA-Center for Aviation. Today, Indonesia is the fifth largest domestic aviation market in the world, after the United States, China, India and Japan.

Starting in 2017, Lion Air, considered a discount carrier, controlled more than 50% of the Indonesian domestic market, according to CAPA.

"What they (the Indonesian government) has dealt with is a systemic issue, which needs to be readjusted or recalibrated in the way that Indonesia views security," Soucie said. "They have come a very long way."

CNN's Darran Simon, Edi Amin, Devianti Faridz, Sheena McKenzie and Sarah Faidell contributed to this report.

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