Indonesia recovers second black box of Sriwijaya Air jet nearly 3 months after crash

JAKARTA: The second black box of the ill-fated Sriwijaya Air plane that crashed into the Java Sea in early January and killed all 62 people on board has been recovered, authorities said on Wednesday (Mar 31). 

The location of the cockpit voice recorder (CVR) of Sriwijaya Air SJ 182 was identified on Tuesday night at about 8pm, and it was retrieved and brought ashore on Wednesday morning.  

The first black box, the flight data recorder (FDR) which contains flight parameters such as airspeed and altitude, was found three days after the crash. 

Finding the CVR a few months after the crash was not easy, said Transport Minister Budi Karya Sumadi.

"We know that the FDR was found some time ago, and we tried to find the CVR among the debris. 

"Finding them was not easy because the diver had to dive to the bottom of the sea," said Mr Sumadi, adding that the CVR was found not far from where the FDR was. 

Head of the Indonesian National Transportation Safety Committee (KNKT) Soerjanto Tjahjono said they will take the CVR to a lab and it will take three days to a week to process the data. 

"And we will match it with the FDR data so we can analyse the data and the situation in the cockpit. Without the CVR, it would be very difficult to determine what had happened," he said. 

The Pontianak-bound Sriwijaya Air SJ 182 took off from Jakarta’s Soekarno-Hatta International airport on January 9 at 2.36pm local time. 

It disappeared from the radar screens of air traffic controllers four minutes into the flight, and authorities later declared that the plane had crashed in the Java Sea, leaving no survivors. 

READ: Sriwijaya Air crash: Co-pilot among the brightest at flying school, pilot a 'warm and compassionate' person

In a preliminary report released in February, KNKT revealed that the plane’s autothrottle system, which controls engine power automatically, could have malfunctioned. 

Investigators have a year to investigate the accident.