Members of Indonesian Navy search for victims of the Lion Air JT610 plane (Photo: AFP/VNA)
Ship Baruna Jaya I of the Marine Survey Technology of the Indonesia Research and Technology Agency has detected signals from the suspected black box of Lion Air JT610 plane, said head of the agency M. Ilyas on October 31.
The airplane crashed into the sea off Karawang in Indonesia's West Java province in the morning of October 29.
M. Ilyas added that three objects were also detected around the ship, strongly believed to be related to the plane's fuselage and black box.
The passenger jet, a Boeing 737 Max 8 coded JT610, was en route from Jakarta to Pangkal Pinang on Bangka Island, carrying 189 people onboard. It lost contact with the air traffic control just 13 minutes after takeoff.
Data showed that the plane might have crashed into the sea from the height of over 1,000 m and a speed of about 640 km per hour. It is likely there were no survivors from the accident.
Indonesia’s Port of Tanjung Priok has zoned off an area for a crisis management centre following the accident. During the past two days, families of the victims came to the port to search for their belongings.
Meanwhile, authorised agencies have collected DNA samples from 147 relatives of the victims of the Lion Air JT610 plane crash for identification.
The process is carried out by the Disaster Victim Identification (DVI) team and Kramat Jati Police hospital, in cooperation with a forensic team from the University of Indonesia, Padjajaran University, and Fatmawati Hospital.
Indonesia's National Transportation Safety Committee (NTSC) said many countries, including Argentina, the US, Singapore, Malaysia and Saudi Arabia, had also offered their help in search and investigation.
VNA
