Indonesian divers on Thursday (Nov 1) retrieved a black box from a Lion Air passenger jet that crashed into the sea, killing all 189 people on board.
The black box should provide clues to what went wrong after flight JT610 lost contact with ground staff just 13 minutes after taking off early on Monday from Jakarta, on its way to the tin-mining town of Pangkal Pinang.
The device, identified as the flight data recorder, would be handed over to Indonesia's transportation safety committee, authorities said.
The box was recovered at around 10.15am in waters off Tanjung Karawang, West Java, Kompas TV reported. TV stations showed images of the device as it was transferred from an inflatable vessel to a ship in a large white container.
BREAKING: Indonesian media reporting widely now that the black box from #JT610 has been retrieved from underwater in a good condition. Has been transferred to search and rescue ship https://t.co/Zj7fqeoYqk pic.twitter.com/H2bhZaMI2n
— Jack Board (@JackBoardCNA) November 1, 2018
"We dug and we got the black box," a diver, identified as Hendra, told broadcaster Metro TV on board a search vessel, the Baruna Jaya. He described how his team found the orange-coloured box intact in debris on the muddy sea floor.
The diver said he had seen only "small pieces" of the aircraft, and the search had closed in on the black box because of the "ping" signals it emitted.
Despite the name, the two black boxes - consisting of the flight data recorder and the cockpit voice recorder - are in fact bright orange with reflective stripes, and all commercial planes are required to have them on board.
The flight data recorder gathers information about the speed, altitude and direction of the plane with enough storage for 25 hours of data, while the cockpit voice recorder keeps track of conversations and other sounds in the pilots' cabin.
Officials show part of the ill-fated Lion Air flight JT610's black box after it was recovered from the Java Sea in the waters off Karawang, Nov 1, 2018. (Photo: AFP/Pradita Utama)
An Indonesian Navy diver (bottom left) holds a recovered black box under water before putting it into a plastic container. (Photo: AFP/Adek Berry)
The treasure trove of information in black boxes helps explain nearly 90 per cent of all crashes, according to aviation experts.
Each box weighs 7kg to 10kg and can survive as deep as 6,000m underwater, or an hour at 1,100 degrees Celsius. To make them easier to find, they are fitted with a beacon which can emit a signal for one month.
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