INDONESIA: Indonesian divers have located parts of the wreckage of a Boeing 737-500 at a depth of 23 meters (75 feet) in the Java Sea, a day after the aircraft with 62 people on board crashed shortly after takeoff from Jakarta.
Indonesian Air Chief Marshal Hadi Tjahjanto in a statement said, “We received reports from the diver team that the visibility in the water is good and clear, allowing the discovery of some parts of the plane”
“We are sure that is the point where the plane crashed. The objects included broken pieces of the fuselage with aircraft registration parts,” Hadi Tjahjanto added.
Air Chief Marshal Hadi further said, “Hopefully until this afternoon the current conditions and the view under the sea are still good so that we can continue the search.”
Earlier, rescuers pulled out body parts, pieces of clothing and scraps of metal from the surface. The break in the search for Sriwijaya Air Flight 182 came after sonar equipment on a navy ship detected a signal from the aircraft at a location that fit the coordinates from the last contact made by the pilots before the plane went missing on Saturday afternoon.
President Joko Widodo said, “I represent the government and all Indonesians in expressing my deep condolences for this tragedy.” “We are doing our best to save the victims. We pray together so that the victims can be found,” he said, adding that he had asked the National Transport Safety Committee to conduct an investigation.
Sriwijaya Air President Director Jefferson Irwin Jauwena said the plane, which is 26 years old and previously used by airlines in the United States, was airworthy. He told reporters Saturday that the plane had previously flown to Pontianak and Pangkal Pinang city on the same day.
“Maintenance report said everything went well and airworthy,” Jauwena told a news conference. He said the plane was delayed due to bad weather, not because of any damage.
Indonesia, the world’s largest archipelago nation, with more than 260 million people, has been plagued by transportation accidents on land, sea and air because of overcrowding on ferries, aging infrastructure and poorly enforced safety standards.
In October 2018, a Boeing 737 MAX 8 jet operated by Lion Air plunged into the Java Sea just minutes after taking off from Jakarta, killing all 189 people on board. The plane involved in Saturday’s incident did not have the automated flight-control system that played a role in the Lion Air crash and another crash of a 737 MAX 8 jet in Ethiopia five months later, leading to the grounding of the MAX 8 for 20 months.
