VOI - Voice of Indonesia | RRI - Radio Republik Indonesia

Research vessel Baruna Jaya has detected the suspected location of the crashed Sriwijaya Air flight SJ-182's cockpit voice recorder (CVR), officials informed on Thursday.

Chief of the Agency for Assessment and Application of Technology (BPPT), Hammam Riza, said the agency's Baruna Jaya IV is still at the crash site and is continuing to search for the CVR, which is part of the black box flight recorder.

"The search for the CVR is still ongoing using an undersea robot which is commonly called Remotely Operated Vehicle (ROV)," he said in a press statement released on Thursday.

The ROV is equipped with Ultra Short Baseline (USBL), capable of determining the coordinate position so that the location of any item on the seabed can be determined, he informed.

During the search operation in which the RCV was deployed over a 53-meter radius, 34 locations of plane debris have been found, with the farthest debris found at a distance of 53 meters from the point where the flight data recorder was retrieved, he said.

The plane's flight data recorder (FDR) was retrieved by Navy divers from the seabed around 4:30 p.m. local time on Tuesday. It was found lying about 23 meters below the water surface.

The FDR device of the aircraft, which was carrying 50 passengers and 12 crew members on board when it crashed into the ocean on January 9, 2021, has been handed over to the National Committee for Transportation Safety (KNKT).

The Transportation Ministry had earlier confirmed that airport authorities had lost contact with the Sriwijaya Air flight, serving the Jakarta-Pontianak route, around 2:40 p.m. local time on Saturday (January 9, 2021).

According to the ministry, the last contact with the Boeing 737-500 jet, bearing the registration number PK-CLC, was made at 11 nautical miles north of Soekarno-Hatta International Airport, after the aircraft crossed an altitude of 11 thousand feet and was ascending to 13 thousand feet

The plane took off from Soekarno-Hatta Airport at 2:40 p.m. local time on Saturday and was scheduled to land at Supadio Airport in Pontianak, West Kalimantan, at 3:50 p.m. local time. (Antaranews)