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KNKT finds cockpit voice recorder, rekindles hope for uncovering cause of Sriwijaya Air crash
Indonesia's transportation safety agency has recovered the cockpit voice recorder of Sriwijaya Air flight SJ182, which authorities are hoping contain data that could help them uncover the cause of the crash that occurred in January.
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Indonesian Navy divers recover wreckage from Sriwijaya Air flight SJ182 during a search and rescue operation near Lancang island, Thousand Islands regency, on Jan. 10, 2021, the day after the Boeing 737-500 crashed shortly after takeoff from Soekarno-Hatta International Airport. (Agence France Presse/Adek Berry)
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search team has recovered the cockpit voice recorder (CVR) of Sriwijaya Air flight SJ182 that plunged into the Java Sea on Jan. 9, just after takeoff from Jakarta en route to Pontianak, West Kalimantan. The discovery of the CVR moves the air disaster investigation closer to uncovering the cause of the crash.
Investigators are to immediately start decoding the data stored on the device, a process expected to take three to seven days. They will then read and analyze the audio recordings taken on the flight deck as the incident unfolded, including communication between the pilot and copilot.
The search was led by the National Transportation Safety Committee (KNKT), which acknowledged that locating and recovering the device had been extremely difficult and involved much trial and error.
Following the disaster, trained divers spent around two months conducting manual searches, but the operation was complicated by the thick mud on the seabed. A dredger vessel was then deployed to scrape 1 meter down into the seabed over an area of 8,100 square meters, which ultimately led to discovering the CVR on Tuesday evening.
“This shows that the government is serious about probing the incident as transparently as possible, as per the President’s instructions, so that a similar incident will not happen again,” KNKT chairman Soerjanto Tjahjono told a press conference on Wednesday.
Soerjanto said an analysis of the CVR data would contribute to earlier information gleaned from analyzing the flight data recorder (FDR) and provide input for improving aviation safety in Indonesia.
Search and rescue (SAR) divers retrieved the FDR of the Sriwijaya Air plane and underwater acoustic beacons on Jan. 12, three days after the air disaster.
