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Indonesia finds Lion Air jet's cockpit voice recorder

January 14, 2019 10:22 IST

Divers have located the cockpit voice recorder of a Lion Air jet that crashed into the Java Sea in October last year, in a possible boost to the accident investigation.

IMAGE: Debris from Flight JT 610 was found near an offshore refining facility after the plane went down within 13 minutes of take-off. Photograph: Antara Foto/PT Pertamina/Reuters

Naval Lieutenant Colonel Agung Nugroho has been quoted as telling Reuters a weak signal from the recorder had been detected for several days and that it had been found buried in about 8 metres of mud in waters about 30 metres deep.

“We don’t know what damage there is, it has obvious scratches on it,” Nugroho has been quoted as saying.

 

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 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.

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