Doubts over retrieving Indonesian plane's black box
Source: Reuters
JAKARTA, Jan 26 (Reuters) - Retrieving the flight recorder of an Indonesian plane that vanished on New Year's Day from sea water at least 1,000 metres (3,300 ft) deep will be difficult and costly, officials said on Friday. A U.S. navy ship with specialised equipment that has been helping search for the missing Adam Air Boeing 737-400 detected signals suspected of being from the plane's flight recorder, the U.S. embassy in Jakarta said on Thursday. Wreckage from the missing started turning up in waters on the west coast of Sulawesi over recent weeks, but crash investigators want to find the black box and main body of the plane to determine the fate of the doomed plane. There were 102 people aboard the missing plane including three Americans, a father with his two daughters. No bodies have yet been found. The chief investigator of the crash, Frans Wenas, said the plane's black box could possibly be retrieved by a Remote Operated Underwater Vehicle (RoV), which is equipped with a camera. "Tomorrow we will meet with technology ministry officials to discuss the possibility of using RoV," he told Reuters. But he said using the device would cost a lot of money, possibly millions of dollars. "This will depend on a discussion between the transport minister and the U.S. ambassador, which will take place maybe in the coming two or three days" he said. The flight recorder is set up to give off a signal for 30 days to aid detection, but it may be lying in waters as deep as 1,700 metres (5,600 ft) in the area. Indonesian Vice President Jusuf Kalla said it was the airline's responsibility to pay for the retrieval of the black box, and cast doubt on whether it would ever be retrieved. "Seeing that it is 1 to 1.5 kilometres underwater, it is implausible to get it," he told reporters. "Therefore, we should let go, I think all the passengers' relatives have already done the same." Dodi Junari, an Adam Air spokesman, said deciding whether the black box would be recovered was up to the search and rescue authorities. The U.S. embassy said on Thursday that the USNS Mary Sears, an oceanographic survey ship, found heavy debris scattered over a wide area where signals were detected and was analysing the data. The 17-year-old plane was heading from Surabaya in East Java to Manado in northern Sulawesi when it vanished in bad weather. The plane made no distress call, although the pilot had reported concerns over crosswinds.(Additional reporting by Muhamad Al Azhari)
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