One black box from the Lion Air jet that crashed into the Java Sea soon after taking off on Monday has been recovered, AFP reported. All 189 people aboard the flight, which took off from Jakarta and was headed for Pangkal Pinang city on the Bangka Island, are feared dead.
“We found one of the black boxes,” chief of Indonesia’s National Transportation Safety Committee, Soerjanto Tjahjono, was quoted as saying. The black box is crucial as it will help establish the reason for the crash.
“We dug and we got the black box” from debris on the sea floor, a diver named Hendra said, according to Reuters. He said it was orange in colour and intact.
According to CNN, the divers had retrieved the flight data recorder but the cockpit video recorder was still to be found. Both devices are known as black boxes.
National Transportation Safety Commission Deputy Director Haryo Satmiko said it will take two to three weeks to read the data from flight data recorder, and an additional two to three months to analyse it. Satmiko added that “some parts” of the plane’s fuselage had also been found.
Indonesian police on Wednesday identified the first victim three days after the crash, The Guardian reported. The passenger was identified as Jannatun Cintya Dewi, a 24-year-old civil servant working for the energy ministry in Jakarta.
“We have examined 48 body bags of victim remains and we could identify one victim through primary identification, which is fingerprints and dental records,” said Brigadier-General Hudi Suryanto who is in charge of the Automatic Finger Print Identification System.
The disaster victim identification team has taken 152 DNA samples from families to help identify victims.
Limited-time offer: Big stories, small price. Keep independent media alive. Become a Scroll member today!
Our journalism is for everyone. But you can get special privileges by buying an annual Scroll Membership. Sign up today!