Indonesia finds Lion Air cockpit voice recorder
January 14, 2019
Indonesian investigators have found the cockpit voice recorder of the Lion Air jet that crashed into the Java Sea in October, deputy maritime minister Ridwan Djamaluddin said on Monday.
The National Transportation Safety Committee had informed the ministry about the discovery, he said. Human remains had also been discovered at the seabed location, he added.
The voice recorder could provide valuable additional information to investigators if it is undamaged.
The 2-month-old Boeing 737 MAX 8 jet crashed minutes after taking off from Jakarta on October 29, killing all 189 people on board.
Recurring technical problem
Indonesia's transport safety agency did not pinpoint a definitive cause of the accident in a recent preliminary crash report.
However, investigators said that Lion Air kept putting the plane back into service despite repeatedly failing to fix a problem with an airspeed indicator in the days leading up to the fatal flight.
The Lion Air crash was the worst airline disaster in Indonesia since 1997, when 234 people died after a Garuda flight crashed near Medan.
In December 2014, an AirAsia flight from Surabaya to Singapore plunged into the sea, killing all 162 on board.
av/amp (AP, Reuters)