© Reuters.
By Bernadette Christina Munthe JAKARTA (Reuters) – Indonesian divers prepared to resume their search on Thursday for the remains of 62 victims and the voice recorder in the cockpit of a Sriwijaya Air plane that sank in the Java Sea shortly after the took off last weekend, authorities said. The crash site search for the downed Boeing (NYSE 🙂 737-500, which was traveling from Jakarta to Pontianak, was temporarily suspended Wednesday after bad weather caused strong waves. “We expect the weather today to be calm,” said Search and Rescue Director Rasman MS. “With good weather that can support our operations, they (the divers) hope to achieve optimal results in the search for the victims and the wreckage.” A team of divers recovered one of the plane’s so-called black boxes, the flight data recorder (FDR), from the seafloor earlier this week and efforts were underway on Thursday to retrieve the cockpit voice recorder (CVR). ). The 27-year-old plane crash is unclear, investigators will rely heavily on black boxes to determine what caused the plane to lose control minutes after takeoff. Indonesia’s national transportation safety committee expects to download the FDR data in the coming days. said the head of the committee, Soerjanto Tjahjono. The country’s Transportation Ministry previously confirmed that the unfortunate plane had been on the ground in the first months of the coronavirus pandemic, but had passed airworthiness requirements in mid-December and resumed service shortly thereafter. it had continued to recover aircraft debris, as well as body parts and personal effects from the 62 Indonesians on board. The national police’s Disaster Victim Identification (DVI) team has identified six victims of the flight, including a crew member and two passengers, according to CNN Indonesia. The Sriwijaya accident is the second major disaster for an airline in Indonesia after 189 people died aboard a Lion Air Boeing 737 Max that sank in the Java Sea minutes after takeoff in 2018.
