Lion Air crash: Why the recovery of a plane from the sea floor will be such a challenge

Finding the voice recorder in the cockpit turns out difficult. The head of the Indonesian National Agency for Search and Rescue, Muhammad Syauqi Syauqi, said his team had not heard the pings from the cockpit voice recorder. It is thought that it lies on the seabed, about 35 meters from the surface, obscured by debris or hidden by mud.

Traitor conditions

According to analysts, under ideal conditions, the investigators would try to document the positioning of the aircraft and its parts in the water, in order to be able to determine the cause of the impact before the aircraft. airplane is raised. But in Indonesia, divers are battling dangerous conditions, including fast currents and muddy waters.

"The cautious step in this case is to remove it from the bottom of the ocean because it is too dangerous to analyze it where it is at the moment," Thomas said.

If the aircraft 's fuselage had been found intact, buoyancy devices would have been used to lift the body of the aircraft and cause minimal damage. But Thomas said the plane was so broken "that repairing it or damaging it now is almost incidental."

The recovery of these small items will likely be by hand or with nets, said David Soucie, Aviation Safety Analyst for CNN.

A big challenge for divers will be to identify and separate all parts of the body from other debris. "If you look at the insulation and the backs, the cushions can easily be mistaken for body parts and vice versa," Soucie said.

In addition to looking for the cockpit voice recorder, divers will search the debris for clues that may indicate the condition the aircraft was in when it crashed.

"Let's say you have the landing gear and maybe two miles away, you find other aircraft parts that are heavy, like engines and that sort of thing, so you suspect that there was a breakup of the aircraft in the air, opposed to a solid impact of the aircraft in one piece, "he said.

Soucie stated that, based on the scale of the damage, it appears that the Lion Air flight suffered a "hydraulically controlled explosion" when it touched the water. This means that during impact, air under pressure strikes the water and causes the fuselage to break.

"You have to think about this thing that hits the water at 400 km / h or faster and that just stopped suddenly," Soucie said. "You've heard people say that water is like concrete when you dive to a depth of 100 feet, so you can imagine what it would be 400 miles to the hour." It's hard to describe the types of damage caused with that. "

DNA samples

Flight 610 was supposed to fly passengers between Jakarta and Pangkal Pinang on Bangka Island for one hour. Instead, it crashed 13 minutes after take-off. The pilots had asked to turn around but had not sent an emergency call.

On Friday, 65 body bags have been collected since the start of the search and rescue operation, although each bag can hold the remains of more than one person.

Investigators will have to rely on DNA samples to identify the victims because of the condition and size of the found remains. The police have 181 DNA samples from the victims' families and are working with 272 human tissue samples.

Lisda Cancer, responsible for the identification of disaster victims, told reporters Friday that only one person had been identified so far – a woman confirmed by a fingerprint.

On Wednesday, authorities began bringing relatives to the port to identify the victims' personal belongings, which were stacked next to cushions and other debris that appeared to be coming from the plane.

Epi Syamsul Qomar, whose 24 year old son was in the plane, burst into tears when he recognized his son's shoe.

"I saw my son's black sneakers," he told CNN. "I've also seen his bank checkbook."

Officials: Flight problems with an airplane the day before

The airliner had had technical problems the night before on another route, revealed passengers aboard this flight to CNN.

"I thought maybe it was caused by turbulence.After 10 minutes of flight, the plane fell as it was losing power.People panicked.It lost about 400 feet, "said Gaharu, adding that he had confirmed the height of the fall a flight tracking site. He said the decline seemed to fall in "a very deep hole".

Lion Air confirmed to CNN that the plane that crashed on Monday had served the JT43 Bali-Jakarta route the day before, and Indonesian authorities confirmed that the pilot on Sunday's flight had reported a problem with one of the instruments of the plane.

Captain Daniel Putut Kuncoro Adi, general manager of the Lion Group, said that all information had been forwarded to the Indonesian National Transport Safety Commission and that he could not answer any questions regarding the fault resulting from 39; a non-disclosure agreement signed to facilitate the investigation.

Expert: "Something is happening in this cockpit"

Although no information is yet available on why the all-new aircraft crashed at sea, FlightRadar24 released data showing that the aircraft behaved erratically during take-off.

When a plane was expected to climb during the first few minutes of flight, the Lion Air aircraft suffered a 726-foot drop in 21 seconds.

Aeronautical expert Soucie told CNN that the last moments of the flight were "outside the normal manual flight mode.

"There was something in that cockpit, or something they were fighting against in the autopilot."