Marine still search for crashed plane's cockpit voice recorder
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.