JAKARTA (INDONESIA) – Indonesian divers on Wednesday expressed confidence of finding the cockpit voice recorder of a Sriwijaya Air jet that crashed into the Java Sea shortly after takeoff with 62 people on board.
They were able to find the flight data recorder (FDR) from the seabed on Tuesday and officials said they had also found the beacon that was attached to the cockpit voice recorder (CVR).
“God willing, we will find it today,” said Navy official Wahyudin Arif.
In an interview with KompasTV, he said divers would comb a very narrow area of the seabed for the voice recorder, adding that divers were able to retrieve the black box by removing the debris on the seabed piece by piece, adding that the same procedure might be required to find the other recorder.
Head of military Hadi Tjahjanto on Tuesday expressed “high confidence” of finding the recorder without delay.
The Boeing 737-500 jet crashed on Saturday four minutes after takeoff from the main airport in Jakarta and there were no survivors.
Investigators have to rely on the two black boxes to find out the cause of the crash.
Indonesia’s National Transportation Safety Committee (KNKT) expects to download the FDR data within two to five days.
The FDR contains about 25 hours of data on eight tracks and the CVR has 30 minutes of recorded conversation based on the final report of a similar model of a Boeing 737 which crashed in 2008.
To provide assistance to the investigation, a team from the US National Transportation Safety Board will be travelling to Jakarta in coming days.
Based on the damage seen on debris retrieved from the sea, the KNKT’s initial findings revealed the plane’s engine was running when it hit the water.
