VOI - Voice of Indonesia | RRI - Radio Republik Indonesia

Feb. 4 - The National Committee for Transportation Safety (KNKT) has continued its manual search for the cockpit voice recorder (CVR) of the crashed Sriwijaya Air flight SJ-182 in the waters off Seribu Islands.

"The search for the CVR memory has continued without the help of the underwater location beacon. So, we are searching for it ourselves on the seabed. That is the peculiar difficulty we are facing," KNKT chief Soerjanto Tjahjono said during a hearing with Commission V of the House of Representatives (DPR) in Jakarta on Wednesday.

The search for the CVR has been continued for the purpose of investigation, he informed.

A CVR plays an important role in recording voices from four canals in an airplane — voice from the pilot's microphone, voice from the co-pilot's microphone, voice from the cockpit and the reserved canal (cockpit and cabin interphone), he said.

"FDR and CVR are important components in an investigation since they record flight data such as time, altitude, speed, coordinates and so on," he added.

The flight data recorder (FDR) of SJ-182 was located on January 12, 2021, three days after the plane crashed.

"From the plane's log book, we did not find significant (data) of damage during the January 6-9, 2021 period," Tjahjono revealed.

Meanwhile, Transportation Minister Budi Karya Sumadi said the search operation for the Sriwijaya Air flight was officially ended on January 21, 2021 in accordance with the rules.

He said the search for the CVR memory has continued as it was separated from its casing, which was retrieved on January 15, 2021.

The 13-day joint search operation for flight SJ-182 involved personnel from the Indonesian military, police, and institutions, among others. The joint operation was extended twice by three days each time.

More than 4,300 personnel, 63 vessels, and 15 airplanes were pressed into service for the joint operation.

The joint team collected 324 bags of human remains, 68 bags of small debris, and 55 bags of large debris from the crash site.

The team also retrieved the flight data recorder (FDR) on the fourth day of the search operation and the cockpit voice recorder (CVR) casing on the seventh day of the search operation.

The debris of the crashed plane was handed to the KNKT, while the human remains were handed to the National Police's Disaster Victim Investigation (DVI) team.

The Sriwijaya Air flight SJ-182, bearing the registration number PK-CLC, had lost contact on January 9, 2021 at 2:40 p.m. Western Indonesia time (WIB) shortly after take-off and crashed between Lancang Island and Laki Island, Thousand Islands, DKI Jakarta. The plane had taken off from Jakarta and was headed to Pontianak.

Based on the manifest, the plane was carrying 50 passengers and 12 crew members on board. Of the total passengers, 40 were adults, seven were children, and three were infants. (Antaranews)