Jakarta: Indonesian authorities said on Monday that a cockpit voice recorder from the Lion Air jet that crashed last year has been recovered.
The Boeing 737 Max vanished from radar about 13 minutes after taking off from Jakarta and slammed into the Java Sea moments after pilots had asked to return to the capital and killing all 189 people onboard. The latest discovery could be critical to finding why the brand new plane fell shortly after take-off.
Investigators have already recovered the flight data recorder from the Boeing 737 Max, which provided information about the speed, altitude and direction of the plane before it plunged into the sea on 29 October.
The preliminary report suggested that pilots of Flight 610 struggled to control the plane’s anti-stalling system immediately before the crash and that jet should have been grounded over a recurrent technical problem before its fatal journey. The cause of the accident has not been revealed yet.
Authorities had called off the grim task of identifying victims of the crash in November, with only 125 people officially identified after tests on human remains that filled some 200 body bags.
Lion said in December it would allocate USD 2.6 million to hire a Dutch company to continue the search with its ship the MPV Everest.