Singapore's detector sought to find plane's black box

Singapore's detector sought to find plane's black box

Tarko Sudiarno
The Jakarta Post
Klaten

Authorities here said on Sunday they would hire a detector from
Singapore to find the flight recorder of a Garuda Airlines Boeing
737 plane that last week made a forced landing into a river in
Klaten regency, Central Java.

"The cockpit voice recorder is not found yet and we are
waiting for a detector from Singapore to investigate its
whereabouts," Suryanto, a member of the rescuer team, told The
Jakarta Post.

"We have our own detector but it cannot used to search for the
black box because it could risk damaging or eliminating the
records in it."

Suryanto said rescue workers tried to contact authorities in
Singapore to help provide them with a detector soon, but failed
to do so as Sunday was public holiday.

The plane carrying 54 passengers crash-landed into the
Bengawan Solo river on Wednesday in bad weather at Serenan
village in Juiring subdistrict, killing one female air attendant
and injuring at least 32 people.

The plane remains floating in water, although it has shifted
15 metres downstream due to heavy currents, also blamed for the
missing flight recorder.

The rescue and investigative teams flatted the river's bank on
Sunday so as to put at edge the ill-fated aircraft. They had also
sawed it's broken right wing to lift the engine out of the river.

Head of the Transportation Safety National Committee Oetaryo
Diran the removal of the two wings could need at least three
days, and the entire operation may take a whole week.

The fuel tanks, which now still hold some 4,000 liters of fuel
(equal to 20 drums), have also been emptied and interior
accessories, like chairs, glasses and other facilities, were also
removed from the floating plane.

Diran said efforts were being intensified to raise and remove
the 80-ton plane from the river.

Marine Chief Captain Achmad Himam said complete evacuation
would still take more time, and what the marines could do now is
to remove the light parts and equipment of the airliner.

Heavy equipment were on their way to the crash site, he added.

Frogmen from the Marine's Flotila Team, who arrived at the
scene on Friday late afternoon, dived in the river at 100 meters
from the crash site to search for the black box.

However, the persistently strong current continued to hamper
their efforts to find the flight recorder in the five-meter deep
river, which was also murky.

Rescuers and investigators believed that the black box must
have slipped through some of the large holes in the damaged
fuselage that was almost filled with water and silt.

"The flight recorder might have slipped through these holes
and dropped into the water and was probably dragged downstream,"
said First Lt. Tek Djoko, a member of the frogmen team.

Another team from the state Bandung Technology Institute (ITB)
arrived at the scene on Sunday to help develop the investigations
into the cause of the crash.

Wednesday's crash-landing was the second accident last week
involving an Indonesia-operated Boeing 737. On Jan. 14, a Boeing
737 operated by Lion Airline crash landed shortly after takeoff
from Pekanbaru, in Riau province. Several people were injured.