Search teams hone in on SilkAir blackbox

By Budiman Moerdijat

PALEMBANG, South Sumatra (JP): Search teams have narrowed down their search for the flight data and voice recorder, or black box, of the downed SilkAir Boeing 737-300 aircraft to an area along the Musi River estuary.

"We've located the suspected area (of the black box)," Oetarjo Diran, head of the investigation team, told reporters at Sultan Mahmud Badaruddin II Airport here yesterday evening.

Without elaborating, Diran said debris was found inside the area.

He explained that the suspected area was found during air surveillance carried out earlier in the morning.

Diran, who also chairs Indonesia's Aircraft Accident Investigation Commission, said the air sweep was conducted by four Super Puma helicopters from Singapore, two Puma SA-330s from the Indonesian Air Force and two Bolco-105s from The National Search and Rescue Agency.

"Considering the heterogeneous nature of the area in the form of farms, bushes and swamp, the aerial search was conducted over a 10-nautical-mile radius along a length of 20 nautical miles," he said.

SilkAir flight MI-185 crashed into the estuary, about 70 kilometers north of Palembang, midway through its flight from Jakarta to Singapore Friday afternoon.

All 104 passengers and crew are feared dead.

So far search teams have failed to recover any intact bodies or even the main fuselage.

The search for the plane's black box, usually located at the rear of the plane, is crucial in helping determine the cause of the crash. Some witnesses claimed the plane exploded before plunging into the river.

On Monday, Indonesian and Singapore minesweepers were used to help locate the elusive fuselage.

Diran said yesterday that four days of intensive searching had yielded engine parts, a turbine compressor, a tire and lots of fragmented fuselage skin.

When asked, Oetarjo said the investigation team would not be too hasty in ruling-out possibilities of the cause of the crash.

"We rule out nothing," he said.

When asked whether he believed there was any possibility of sabotage, Diran replied the team had not come to any sort of conclusion since they had not analyzed anything and warned against expecting hasty results.

Speaking on the scattered debris which had been found, Diran said it could be the result of numerous things.

"In engineering terms, it's called progressive or gradual disintegration," he said.

He said it could also be due to metal fatigue.

But when pressed further, he did not reject the possibility that the disintegration was caused by a bomb.

"It could be (caused by a bomb), but it could have also been caused by a lightning strike or many other things," he quickly retorted.

Separately, South Sumatra Police chief Brig. Gen. Deddi Ganrijadi said police had identified one of the passengers from one of the body parts found.

Deddi said cross-reference of finger prints of a hand found by divers established that it belonged to Singaporean Seet Cher Peng.

Seet was among 40 Singaporeans who were on the SilkAir plane, along with 23 Indonesians, 10 Malaysians, five Americans, five French, four Germans, three Britons, two Japanese, one Austrian, one Australian, one Indian, one Taiwanese and one Bosnian.

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