(COLOMBO, LANKAPUVATH) –Search teams scoured the sea off Indonesia on Tuesday for any signs of life and evidence to determine what brought down a Lion Air flight with 189 people on board.
Divers hunted for the main fuselage and deployed underwater beacons to trace the flight’s black box recorders in order to find out what caused one of the deadliest aviation incidents in Indonesia’s history.
The search was stopped for the night although sonar vessels and an underwater drone continued hunting for the downed airliner.
“Hopefully this morning we can find the wreckage or fuselage,” Soerjanto Tjahjono, the head of Indonesia’s transport safety panel, told Reuters news agency.
Lion Air’s aeroplane was almost brand new though it crashed shortly after take-off from the airport in Jakarta after the pilot reported he needed to return the aircraft to the ground.
The Boeing 737 was flown for the first time on August 15, and the airline said it had been certified as airworthy before Monday’s flight by an engineer who is a specialist in Boeing models.
Indonesia’s search-and-rescue agency said there was little hope of finding survivors. “[It] would be a miracle,” spokesman Yusuf Latif said.
The agency said on Tuesday that 10 intact bodies, as well as body parts, had been recovered.
