Airbus Industrie team set to leave crash site

MEDAN, North Sumatra (JP): Airbus Industrie's air safety investigation team will leave the country today after helping Indonesian workers over the past three weeks search for the cockpit voice recorder of the ill-fated Garuda Indonesia Airbus A-300-B4.

"Those colleagues from Airbus Industrie have been working very hard in assisting us search for the black box," said Oetarjo Diran, the head of the Ministry of Transportation's search team.

"Although team members from England and Australia are leaving, the search for the black box will continue," Oetarjo told Antara here Monday night.

It is hoped the voice recorder, once found, will shed light on the cause of the crash of Airbus A-300-B4 in Buah Nabar on Sept. 26, killing all 234 people on board.

Oetarjo said help which had been given by the Airbus Industrie team, including the latest type of detector said to be effective in recovering metal objects buried in mud, was proof that the international aviation community also wished to draw a lesson from the tragic disaster.

International aviation circles, he added, felt that the Garuda Airbus crash was a major disaster and unique in terms of the field configuration, number of people killed and the crash site, which is in a densely forested valley.

Oetarjo said he did not overlook the moral and material help given by the local people, such as hoes and baskets to dig out pieces of the aircraft buried in the mud and carry them away.

"What's important is to understand why and how the accident happened. Not to seek who's to blame," he said.

"This is why we must not lose spirit in the search for the black box and we still need help from various parties, the Armed Forces, the government and local communities."

Head of the provincial transportation office, Ashwin Harahap, dismissed speculation that the black box had been found and was hidden by some people to obscure evidence.

"That's not true. It's not hidden. It's still hasn't been found," he said after a ceremony to return teenagers Siswandi Simatupang and Chrismanto Manurung to their parents after they stowed away on a flight from Medan to Jakarta by hiding inside an airplane's landing gear compartment.

Harahap also dismissed yet another speculation that the black box never existed in the first place, which was why the search had proven so futile. "The handle of the black box has already been found," he said.

Harahap said that search efforts would continue. (21/33)