Indonesia plane black box missing
Authorities have continued to search for a black box from a plane that crashed in eastern Indonesia, as rescuers began removing the first of the 54 victims’ bodies from the remote crash site.
Officials revealed on Wednesday that they were still looking for one of the Trigana Air plane’s two black boxes after initially saying both had been found.
The remains of 17 people who died when the plane crashed during a short flight in bad weather on Sunday were taken by hundreds of locals and rescuers through jungle and over mountains in Papua province on Wednesday.
The recovery effort was halted at nightfall and was due to resume on Thursday, transport ministry spokesman J. A. Barata told AFP.
Officials initially believed both black boxes – the flight data recorder and the cockpit voice recorder – had been found in the wreckage.
But Barata said the flight data recorder, which takes readings from many different parts of the aircraft, had not yet been recovered.
The tragedy was just the latest air accident in Indonesia, which has a poor aviation safety record and has suffered major disasters in recent months, including the crash of an AirAsia plane in December with the loss of 162 lives.
It took rescuers two days to reach the site after initial efforts were hindered by the rough terrain and bad weather.
They found the twin-turboprop aircraft in pieces scattered across a fire-blackened clearing, and the bodies of the 49 passengers and five crew who had been aboard.
A team of investigators from France’s BEA agency, which probes air accidents, and four technical advisors from ATR, a European plane maker based in France, is heading to Indonesia to look into the accident.
The plane had set off from Jayapura on what was supposed to be a 45-minute flight to Oksibil, but lost contact 10 minutes before landing as it sought to descend in heavy cloud and rain.
Email the Travel Weekly team at traveldesk@travelweekly.com.au
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