Sriwijaya Air Crash: Voice Recorder Found on Final Day of Search

(Bloomberg) -- Indonesia has retrieved the cockpit voice recorder of the Sriwijaya Air passenger jet that crashed in the Java Sea on Jan. 9, potentially leading to crucial information on what caused the disaster.

The recorder was recovered at around 8 p.m. Tuesday and has been handed to the National Transportation Safety Committee for examination, Indonesia’s Transport Minister Budi Karya Sumadi said at a briefing Wednesday.

Sriwijaya Air Flight 182 crashed minutes after takeoff from Jakarta, killing all 62 aboard. Investigators haven’t said what caused the Boeing Co. 737-500 to plunge from almost 11,000 feet (3,354 meters) into the sea.

The flight-data recorder was recovered in the days after the crash, but the memory unit that stores recordings of pilot communications and sounds in the cockpit -- a key piece in the puzzle of finding out what happened in the flight’s final moments -- was harder to find.

Divers were used in search and recovery efforts for the first one-and-a-half months, after which authorities deployed a dredger to scour an area of the seabed near where the plane crashed. The vessel is equipped with a suction system that can go 1-meter-deep into mud.

Tuesday evening was due to be the final night of the search, according to NTSC Chairman Soerjanto Tjahjono.

“We finally found it,” he said at Wednesday’s briefing.​

It could take up to a week to analyze the data. “We will transcribe and match it with the previous FDR data to see what really happened in the cockpit,” he said, referring to the flight data recorder.

A preliminary report from the NTSC on Feb. 10 said the left engine began reducing power less than three minutes into the flight while the right engine’s setting stayed the same. It said there were indications the pilots couldn’t maintain their assigned heading, while also attempting to avoid a storm.

The search was hampered by bad weather initially, and the fact that the aircraft hit the sea so hard that it was obliterated. Divers retrieved the battered casing of the cockpit voice recorder a week after the crash, but the crucial memory chip containing its data wasn’t there.

Boeing issued a safety bulletin following the NTSC’s preliminary report, reminding pilots of the steps needed to ensure they maintain control of an aircraft. It didn’t specifically address the Sriwijaya Air flight.

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