Black box recovered, hoped to shed light on mystery crash

The National Committee for Transportation Safety (KNKT) says it hopes that the flight box retrieved from the Casa 212 aircraft that crashed in North Sumatra last week will explain how the accident happened and how the passengers on board died.

Authorities announced that all 18 people aboard the Casa 212 aircraft — 14 passengers and 4 crew members — died instantly upon impact, but some victims’ relatives say that the passengers survived the impact, and that exposure to the cold and starvation due to what they called the government’s slow response to the crash was the true cause of death.

The Casa 212 aircraft, operated by Nusantara Buana Air (NBA), was found suspended among tree tops in the Hulusekelem mountainous area in Bahorok, North Sumatra. It lost contact with airport flight control 10 minutes before it was scheduled to land in Kutacane, Southeast Aceh, on its way from Medan, North Sumatra.

All 18 bodies were evacuated on Sunday.

KNKT chief Tatang Kurniadi expressed hope that the data from the box would uncover the mystery behind the crash.

“Today we have another important item of data in the form of the black box from the rescue team,” Tatang told The Jakarta Post at Medan Navy Airstrip on Monday.

“We will decipher the black box to find out the cause of the crash,” he said, adding that the investigation would take 12 months.

The SAR team sent to evacuate the victims on Sunday also retrieved the flight box, or black box, from the aircraft’s tail section.

National Search and Rescue Agency chief Vice Marshall Daryatmo said that he hoped the black box, which was in good condition, could shed light on the controversies surrounding the accident.

Relatives of the victims have accused authorities of being slow to deploy a rescue team.

One woman, who had three family members on board the aircraft, said she believed they had died two or three days after the crash.

Authorities have denied such suggestions, saying that although bad weather had delayed the search and rescue team’s arrival at the crash site, all of the passengers had died on impact.

Responding to observations that the victims’ bodies did not look decayed when they were found, Daryatmo said that the low air temperature in the area had slowed down decomposition.

A councilor at Southeast Aceh has called for an inquiry into the accident, and Southeast Aceh Regent Hasanuddin Beruh pondered a proposal that the central government reevaluate the Medan-Kutacane route.

“We will ask the government to shift the route to a safer area. The current route is not safe,” he said, as reported by Antara.

He said that Nusantara Buana Air received a government subsidy worth Rp 250,000 (US$28) per passenger.

“The subsidy has run for a year and will end in December,” he said.

In Kutacane, 10 of the victims’ bodies were returned to their relatives. One of the victims was councilor Suhelman. His mother fainted when she received his casket.

The bodies were transported by land from Adam Malik Hospital in Medan. They departed from Medan on Sunday at 10 p.m. and arrived in Kutacane on Monday at 5:30 a.m.