Search teams hone in on SilkAir blackbox
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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