Lion Air plane crash: Cockpit voice recorder of doomed jet found, officials say
Jakarta, Indonesia — Navy divers have located the cockpit voice recorder of a Lion Air jet that crashed into the Java Sea in October, Indonesian officials said Monday, in a possible boost to the accident investigation. Ridwan Djamaluddin, a deputy maritime minister, told reporters that remains of some of the 189 people who died in the crash were also discovered at the seabed location.
"We got confirmation this morning from the National Transportation Safety Committee's chairman," Djamaluddin said.
A spokesman for the Indonesian navy's western fleet, Lt. Col. Agung Nugroho, said divers using high-tech "ping locator" equipment had started a new search effort Friday and found the voice recorder beneath 26 feet of seabed mud. The plane crashed in waters 98 feet deep.
"This is good news, especially for us who lost our loved ones," said Irianto, the father of Rio Nanda Pratama, a doctor who died in the crash. "Even though we don't yet know the contents of the CVR, this is some relief from our despair," he said.
The device was being transported to a navy port in Jakarta, Nugroho said, and will be handed over to the transportation safety committee, which is overseeing the accident investigation.
Indonesian authorities intend to download the device's contents Monday, the Reuters news agency reports.
"We have our own laboratory and personnel team to do it," Haryo Satmiko, deputy chief of the transportation safety committee, told Reuters. He said downloading, transcribing and analyzing the contents of the recorders used to take up to three months.
The 2-month-old Boeing 737 MAX 8 jet plunged into the Java Sea just minutes after taking off from Jakarta on Oct. 29, killing all 189 people on board.
The Reuters news agency points out the cockpit voice recorder is one of two so-called black boxes crucial to the investigation of the plane crash.
The cockpit data recorder was recovered three days after the crash and showed that the jet's airspeed indicator had malfunctioned on its last four flights.
If the voice recorder is undamaged, it could provide valuable additional information to investigators.
Navy chief Rear Adm. Harjo Susmoro said the voice recorder was found just 164 feet from where the data recorder was located. He said the voice recorder's signal, designed to last 90 days following a crash, would've stopped in about 15 days.
The Lion Air crash was the worst airline disaster in Indonesia since 1997, when 234 people died on a Garuda flight near Medan. In December 2014, an AirAsia flight from Surabaya to Singapore plunged into the sea, killing all 162 on board.
Lion Air is one of Indonesia's youngest airlines but has grown rapidly, flying to dozens of domestic and international destinations. It has been expanding aggressively in Southeast Asia, a fast-growing region of more than 600 million people.