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BPPT vessel detects signal possibly from JT610 black box
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Lion Air aircraft (Shutterstock.com/Wien Kusuma)
K
R Baruna Jaya I, a research vessel owned and operated by the Assessment and Application of Technology Agency (BPPT), has picked up a signal believed to be from the black box of the Lion Air flight JT610 that crashed on Monday.
Authorities are racing against time to find the flight recorder of the aircraft that crashed into the Java Sea on Monday morning with 189 people on board to gain primary information to assist the incident investigation.
"Insya Allah [God willing] we found an indication of the signal from the black box based on the pinger locator," said M. Ilyas, the head of marine survey technology at the BPPT, as quoted by Antara on Wednesday.
The BPPT deployed the pinger locator to detect the signal from the aircraft's black box on Wednesday morning, Ilyas said, while an Ultra-Short BaseLine (USBL) transponder had been deployed since dawn.
In its efforts to locate the black box, authorities had deployed the high-tech equipment available using the KR Baruna Jaya I vessel, he said.
Meanwhile, Tris Handoyo, the head of the JT610 flight search and rescue team in Tanjung Karawang, West Java, said operations aboard KR Baruna Jaya I were prioritizing underwater search.
Authorities deployed remotely operated vehicles (ROV) after the black box signal was detected. "After we picked up the signal, the ROV were deployed to take [underwater] visuals," Tris said.
The Lion Air flight JT610 was en route to Pangkalpinang, Bangka Belitung Islands, from Jakarta when it crashed into the Java Sea, 7 nautical miles north of Tanjung Bungin, Karawang. The 189 people on board comprised 181 passengers, two pilots and six crew members. (afr)
