Sriwijaya Plane Black Box Contains Data from Last 18 Flights: Investigators

Jakarta. The National Transportation Safety Committee, or KNKT, has successfully downloaded 370 flight parameters from the retrieved flight data recorder, or FDR, belonging to the Sriwijaya Air plane which plunged to the Java Sea on January 9.

"We have successfully downloaded data from the FDR which contains 370 parameters, 27 hours or 18 flights, including the ill-fated flight," KNKT chief investigator Nurcahyo Utomo said in a statement on Tuesday.

According to flight operations online repository Skybrary, an FDR records an aircraft performance parameters such as time, airspeed, altitude, heading, and aircraft attitude. 

Nurcahyo said the committee is still investigating the downloaded data to decipher the cause of the crash. They will publish the initial report 30 days after the accident.

Joining the investigation are 11 representatives from the US National Transportation Safety Board, Boeing, and engine maker General Electric. This follows the International Civil Aviation Organization (ICAO) Annex 13 on aircraft accident and incident investigation. ICAO Annex 13 allows the state of the aircraft manufacturer to participate in the investigation.

As part of the partnership with Asean, member state Singapore has assigned two investigators from its Transportation Safety Investigation Bureau to assist the probe into the Flight SJ-182 crash.

CVR Still Missing

Indonesian authorities are still looking for the second black box or the cockpit voice recorder (CVR). The CVR records the audio environment in the flight deck.

Until now, the search and rescue team has only retrieved the casing and batteries of the CVR. Bad weather condition becomes a hurdle to the search.

"The weather is not good today. The rescue is risky," National Search and Rescue Agency (Basarnas) operation director Rasman told local media Tempo on Tuesday.

Rasman said Basarnas has deployed 300 divers to look out for the CVR's flash memory. The search is done manually because the beacon, which would emit signals, was detached from the CVR.

A Boeing 737-500 plane, flown by Sriwijaya Air, plunged into the waters of Thousands Island shortly after takeoff from Soekarno-Hatta International Airport in Tangerang, Banten, on Jan. 9, 2021. The plane -- with 62 people on board -- was heading to Pontianak, West Kalimantan.