Indonesia intensifies search for black boxes of crashed Sriwijaya Air plane
- The flight recorders will provide details on why the Boeing 737-500 disappeared after taking off from Jakarta’s airport in heavy rain on Saturday
- Over a dozen helicopters, 53 navy ships and 20 boats, and 2,600 rescue personnel have found debris and human remains in the Java Sea
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Indonesian divers film wreckage of crashed Sriwijaya Air passenger jet on seabed
The Boeing 737-500 jet disappeared minutes after taking off from Jakarta, Indonesia’s capital, during heavy rain on Saturday, and the search so far has yielded plane parts and human remains but no sign of survivors.
Authorities have said signals from the boxes containing the cockpit voice and flight data recorders were detected between Lancang and Laki islands in the Thousand Island chain just north of Jakarta’s coast. Officials said they have marked a location where the sounds were being emitted from the black boxes, which detached from the tail of the aircraft when it plummeted into the sea.
The cockpit voice recorder holds conversations between pilots, and the data recorder tracks electronic information such as airspeed, altitude and vertical acceleration. When found, they will be transported to port and handed to the National Transportation Safety Committee overseeing the crash investigation.
More than a dozen helicopters, 53 navy ships and 20 boats, and 2,600 rescue personnel have been searching since Sunday and have found parts of the plane in the water at a depth of 23 metres (75 feet), leading rescuers to continue searching the area.