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FL JT610: Latest 

Via the Oz:

Lion Air black box a break in the hunt for clues
[img=565x0]https://cdn.newsapi.com.au/image/v1/f257df4b5a46345ec682480091c9fe1c?width=650[/img]Families of the victims of Lion Air flight JT 610 look for personal items of their lost relatives at Tanjung Priok port yesterday. Picture: Getty Images

• By AMANDA HODGE and NIVELL RAYDA
  
• 12:00AM NOVEMBER 2, 2018
  

The pilot on the previous flight of Lion Air’s doomed plane made a distress call shortly after takeoff due to technical problems, it has emerged.

However the problems seemed to right themselves and the plane continued on its planned flight to Jakarta. Hours later the same jet crashed into the Jave Sea on another flight, killing all 189 on board.

After the call on Sunday the pilot updated the control tower to say that the plane was flying normally and he would not return to the airport as requested, according to Herson, chief of the airport authority for the Bali-Nusa Tenggara area.

“The captain himself was confident enough to fly to Jakarta from Denpasar,” said Herson, who goes by one name.

The pilot of another plane that was approaching Bali just after the Lion Air jet took off said he was ordered to circle above the airport and listened in to a radio conversation between the Lion Air pilot and air traffic controllers.

“Because of the Pan-Pan call, we were told to hold off, circling the airport in the air,” said the pilot, who declined to be named.

“The Lion plane requested to return back to Bali five minutes after take-off, but then the pilot said the problem had been resolved and he was going to go ahead to Jakarta.”

Meanwhile, Indonesian authorities say the discovery yesterday of the black box flight data recorder from Lion Air Flight JT610 represents a “huge break in the investigation”.

More than 1000 search and rescue personnel continued to scour the ocean floor late yesterday for the fuselage in which many of the victims are believed still to be trapped, as well as a second black box that may contain the last recorded conversations between pilots in the cockpit before the plane went down just after 6.30am on Monday.

Investigators are hoping the discovery of the intact flight data recorder, found at a depth of 30m and buried under mud and debris, will help determine the cause of the country’s worst aviation dis­aster in decades.

“This is a huge break in the investigation,” National Search and Rescue Agency chief Muhammad Syaugi said, adding that the data from the flight recorder would be downloaded and analysed in coming days. “We also found debris bigger than what we have in previous days that appear to be part of the fuselage.”

One piece measured 1.5m by 50cm while another piece was too heavy to lift into the boat, he said.

A navy dive team equipped with a “ping locator” fought strong underwater currents throughout Wednesday and early yesterday to find the source of the sound emitted by an underwater locator beacon attached to the black box.

“We combed the area and dug through the mud where the signal was strongest and indeed we found the black box,” First Sergeant Hendra Saputra said.

There was no sign of the fuselage, however.

Aviation safety expert Gerry Soejatman told The Australian the fact that the tail of the Boeing 737 Max 8 plane, where the black boxes are fitted, had not been found nearby suggested it had “disintegrated” on impact.

“There is a chance the fuselage might have been completely destroyed. That would explain why we haven’t found huge parts, because there are no huge parts, and why no victims’ bodies are intact,” he said.

Transport Minister Budi Karya Sumadi said the government had asked Lion Air to suspend four employees — its engineering maintenance director, quality control manager, flight maintenance manager and release manager — to assist the investigation and help clarify why a two-month-old aircraft that had experienced technical problems the night before the crash was cleared for flight.

Boeing engineers are in Jakarta assisting with the investigation.

The government had ordered an immediate inspection of all Boeing 737 Max 8 aircraft operated by Indonesian carriers and had left open the possibility of grounding all 11 planes — operated by Lion Air and Garuda — if a specific issue was identified with the aircraft model. Mr Budi said all 11 had been deemed airworthy and cleared for flight.

He would meet Australian embassy officials to ask that they lift the ban on Australian government employees and contractors flying Lion Air or its subsidiaries pending the results of the probe into a crash that has raised fresh questions over air safety standards in Indonesia.

“What can we do? We have a good bilateral relationship. Surely we can work it out with them. Maybe there is a middle ground where we can meet,” he said.

Lion Air does not fly under its own banner into Australia, but does operate flights on routes under the liveries of regional subsidiary carriers Batik Air, Thai Lion Air and Malindo Air.

Fifty-six body bags containing human remains have been recovered from waters around the crash site, and 238 DNA samples have been taken from relatives hoping to take at least something of their missing loved ones home for burial. So far, only one passenger, 24-year-old Jannatun Cintya Dewi, has been positively identified and returned to her family in Sidoarjo, East Java.

Ms Jannatun, a civil servant with the Indonesian Department of Energy and Mineral Resources, was buried yesterday morning in a small village cemetery, her grave covered in pink, white and green flower petals.

MTF...P2