Authorities ‘confident’ crashed Lion Air jet has been found, but currents and low visibility hamper recovery
- The accident, feared to have killed 189 people, has resurrected concerns about Indonesia’s patchy air-safety record
- Some 53 body bags filled with limbs and other remains have so far been recovered, authorities said on Wednesday
Indonesian authorities were confident they had located the body of the crashed Lion Air jet in the Java Sea on Wednesday, but said the strengths of the currents and low visibility were hampering recovery efforts.
Muhammad Syaugi, the head of the country’s search and rescue agency, or Basarnas, said one of the four ships deployed to scour an area of 15 nautical miles had a remotely operated underwater vehicle that detected the Boeing 737 Max 8’s fuselage amid other debris, including that of wooden ships.
“Pings”, or the signal from the plane’s flight recorder, were also detected but the currents were too intense for divers to properly investigate the area about 400 metres off the coast of Karawang, an area east of Jakarta.
“In that area, we saw life jackets, pants, clothes on the seabed, that’s why we are confident that the fuselage is also there. We hope tonight we will find it, including the black box … the black box is designed to last 90 days and it can be heard from a 3km radius,” Syaugi said in a late evening briefing to the media.
Military chief Hadi Tjahjanto said in-flight magazines were spotted among the sunken debris and when the underwater vehicle went closer, the currents caused the pages to turn.
“It shows the magazines hadn’t been there for long,” Hadi said.
‘My body also has these parts’: Lion Air rescuers discuss their grim task
Retrieving the black box will be key to helping investigators understand what caused the two-month-old plane, one of the world’s newest and most advanced commercial passenger jets, to crash with 189 passengers on board.