Indonesia finds cockpit voice recorder of crashed Lion Air jet
Jakarta, Jan 14: Navy divers have located the cockpit voice recorder of a Lion Air jet that crashed into the Java Sea in October, Indonesian officials said Monday, in a possible boost to the accident investigation.
Ridwan Djamaluddin, a deputy maritime minister, told reporters that remains of some of the 189 people who died in the crash were also discovered at the seabed location.
"We got confirmation this morning from the National Transportation Safety Committee's chairman," he said.
A spokesman for the Indonesian navy's western fleet, Lt Col Agung Nugroho, said divers using high-tech equipment found the voice recorder beneath 8 meters (26 feet) of seabed mud. The plane crashed in waters 30 meters (98 feet) deep.
The 2-month-old Boeing 737 MAX 8 jet plunged into the Java Sea just minutes after taking off from Jakarta on October 29, killing everyone on board.
The cockpit data recorder was recovered within days of the crash and showed that the jet's airspeed indicator had malfunctioned on its last four flights.
If the voice recorder is undamaged, it could provide valuable additional information to investigators.
The Lion Air crash was the worst airline disaster in Indonesia since 1997, when 234 people died on a Garuda flight near Medan. In December 2014, an AirAsia flight from Surabaya to Singapore plunged into the sea, killing all 162 on board.
Lion Air is one of Indonesia's youngest airlines but has grown rapidly, flying to dozens of domestic and international destinations. It has been expanding aggressively in Southeast Asia, a fast-growing region of more than 600 million people.
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50 passengers from Karnataka stranded in conflict region arrived in New Delhi: CM office
Bengaluru (PTI): Fifty passengers from the state who were stranded in the Gulf region amid the ongoing West Asia conflict arrived in New Delhi early Friday morning after departing from Fujairah in the UAE, Chief Minister Siddaramaiah's office said.
The protocol team (Karnataka govt) were at the Indira Gandhi International Airport in New Delhi with breakfast, it said.
They were transported on a KSRP (Karnataka State Reserve Police) bus and two cars to domestic terminals for their onward travel to Bengaluru, Mangaluru and Hubballi, the CM office said in a statement.
Many were disgruntled and complained to the team that MEA did nothing, and it was only a local organisation that helped them with their tickets, etc., the statement claimed.
"Incidentally, we are the only state so far that is providing this assistance at the Delhi airport," it added.
