Yet Another Mystery Passenger Jet Crash
"[Authorities had picked up intermittent pings being transmitted from the CVR and FDR to a receiver that can] detect and locate the black boxes.""The plane speed when it hits the water is very high, but of course, we have to wait for the investigation to say more about this."Suryanto Cahyono, head, National Transportation Safety Commission, Indonesia"We will do our best to find and save the victims, and together, let's pray that they can be found.""In the name of the government and Indonesian people we would like to express our condolences on what has happened."Indonesia President Joko Widodo"We have two spots that highly suspected as a location of two black boxes. But unfortunately there is a lot of debris around that spots.""[A diving team is working to clear out debris, and hope to recover the devices] soon."Indonesia Navy Commander Admiral Yudo Margono
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| Indonesian rescue teams find part of a Sriwijaya airplane on January 10, 2021 near Jakarta, Indonesia. |
Over 13,000 islands make up the archipelago nation of Indonesia. Passenger traffic in the country of 270 million people has boomed with domestic aviation the answer to getting people around from one island to another. Such domestic traffic has tripled in volume between the years 2005 and 2017. Indonesians are heavily reliant on air transport on their commutes between islands with the archipelago stretching over 3,000 miles. There are 51 airlines in total in Indonesia.
All of these airlines were banned in 2007 by the European Union in reflection of their poor air safety records. Poor aircraft maintenance, inadequate pilot training, inexperienced pilots, all contributed to a large measure of avoidable accidents resulting in crashes killing all aboard. Since that time standards have gradually improved and eventually all Indonesian airlines were cleared from the EU blacklist by 2018.
Sriwijaya Air is a low-cost domestic airline, representing the country's third-largest carrier transporting over 950,000 passengers monthly. Leaving from its base hub in the Indonesian capital of Jakarta it flies to 53 domestic destinations as well as three regional countries. On Saturday, a Boeing 737-500 Sriwijaya Air jet with 62 passengers and crew on board on a domestic flight heading to West Kalimantan disappeared from radar screens four minutes following takeoff.
A day later authorities located the black boxes of the jet and retrieved human body parts and wreckage from the plane. The night-time searches were confined to sonar scans with search andrescue boats in play during daylight hours. No clues have as yet arisen with respect to what may possibly have caused the crash. What is without doubt, however, is Indonesia's dreadful record on air safety and the loss of lives in a series of plane crashes.
Two years earlier, Lion Air Flight 610 crashed after taking off from Jakarta, ending up in the Java Sea killing all 189 people aboard. Improper design and certification of the 737 Max 8 jet and a flight crew inadequately trained to respond to a malfunction of a system they were unable to master, led to the crash according to a report issued a year later by Indonesian authorities. The more recent Boeing 737-500 involved in Saturday's crash is absent the flawed cockpit software that led to the previous accident.
In 2017 Lion Air had two accidents, where a Boeing 737 missed the runway and crashed into the sea near Bali, where passengers were able to swim or wade to safety. Another Boeing 737 collided with a cow after touching down at the airport on the island of Sulawesi. The country has the unfortunate reputation, according to Aviation Safety Network's database, of its airlines being the cause of more people dying in air crashes than any other country over the past decade.
In the most recent crash days ago, pieces of wreckage were found by rescuers, including the plane's altimeter radar, emergency chute and part of the tail, all brought back to Jakarta, objects which will form evidence to be examined in an investigation to follow. Clothing and body parts have also been recovered, with police asking families for information to be provided to aid in identification; dental records and DNA samples.
Flightradar24, a tracking service, gave a timeline for the aircraft, that it took off at 2:36 p.m. local time, climbing to 10,900 feet within four minutes after takeoff, and began a steep descent, transmission data stopping 21 seconds after. What might have caused the sudden descent remains a mystery. Air traffic control had asked the pilot why his plane was heading northwest rather than following its expected flight path, just seconds before it disappeared.
To add to the mysterious aura, it appears that records indicate decades of experience between the two pilots, the flight captain reported to have been a former air force pilot.
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| Members of the Indonesian Navy retrieve a piece of debris while searching for remains of Sriwijaya Air Flight 182 on Monday, 11 January 2021. |
Labels: Domestic Flights, Indonesia, Mysterious Circumstances, Passenger Jets, Plane Crash
posted by Pieface @ Tuesday, January 12, 2021
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