Marine still search for crashed plane's cockpit voice recorder
Tarko Sudiarno, The Jakarta Post, Klaten, Central Java
A team of divers from the Marine Corps began removing on Saturday parts of the Garuda Boeing-737 airplane, which crash-landed in bad weather in Klaten, Central Java, on Wednesday, but they have yet to recover the cockpit voice recorder (CVR).
The cockpit voice recorder is much needed to know the conversation between pilot and copilot and the communications between the pilot and nearby Tower before crash-landing on Bengawan Solo River so that the investigating team will be able to make an analysis on the causes of the incident.
A team of 11 divers, led by Capt. Achmad Himawan, was searching for the VCR believed to be inside the plane's part inundated by the river water but it was not found until the evacuation work was halted on Saturday evening.
The divers, however, faced difficulties due to the heavy downpour and strong river currents. The depth of the river was about five meters, but the visibility was only about half a meter due to the murky water, Achmad said.
He said that his team would expand the search to a radius of 100 meters from the site where the plane had first crash-landed.
"The tail of the plane hit a huge rock on the bottom of the river during the emergency landing, so the CVR is probably somewhere in that location. It's hard to predict since we can only use our instincts ... we're groping around in the muddy river." the officer said.
The joint team from the state National Commission on Transportation Accidents is reportedly awaiting a detecting device from Singapore to help recover the CVR.
"Our priority is to locate the CVR ... because it is vital to the whole investigation. What really happened can be determined from that," Dr. Soerjanto Tjahjono of the Commission said.
At around 4 p.m. on Saturday, Siti Fatonah, the mother of a stewardess Sinta Anggraini who was killed in the crash, visited the site of the incident and entered the plane. Soon after she fainted and had to be carried outside the plane.
As of Saturday evening, however, thousands of onlookers packed the Bengawan Solo river to watch events unfold around the plane.
Heavy traffic congestion occurred about 2 kilometers away from the site in Jumiring, Klaten regency.
Officials have not as yet determined why the plane crashed, but preliminary investigations indicate that engine failure may have been the cause.
Wednesday's crash-landing was the second accident in two days involving an Indonesian-operated Boeing 737. On Monday, several people were slightly injured when a 737 operated by Lion Airlines crash-landed immediately after takeoff from Pekanbaru on Sumatra island.
In September 1997, 234 people were killed when a Garuda plane crashed onto a village near Medan in North Sumatra due to poor visibility resulting from thick smoke from forest fires.