Search teams yesterday tried to locate the black box of an Indonesian jetliner that crashed into the ocean with 102 people on board, but sea depths of more than 1,5km were hampering the hunt.
Experts said authorities had to find the box -- also known as a flight data recorder -- or significant pieces of wreckage such as the engines, cockpit and wings to determine what caused the Boeing 737 to crash.
"It's very much like putting a puzzle together in terms of trying to look at each of the pieces," said Jim Hall, a former chairman of the US National Transportation Safety Board.
"Everything is carefully examined and there is a process in which things are ruled out before you rule anything in," he said.
The plane disappeared off radar on New Year's Day after its pilot reported strong winds en route to the northeastern island of Sulawesi.
A massive land and sea search found no trace until earlier this week, when several small pieces of the plane were found by fishermen or beachcombers in western Sulawesi. No bodies or survivors have been recovered.
A fisherman who pulled the first piece of the plane -- a 1m length section of the tail -- from the sea received a cash reward of a US$5,500 from the government yesterday.
Bakri Hapipah said he stored the piece under his stilted house for a day until another villager told him to report it to authorities.
"I never thought it would be part of the missing plane," he told reporters.
Locating the black box is proving a massive challenge.
Authorities do not know whether large parts of the plane remain intact on the ocean floor or if the jetliner exploded into thousands of small pieces, either in mid-air or on contact with the sea.
Eddy Suyanto, the head of the search team, said a US navy ship capable of mapping the ocean floor had been unable to determine whether several large metal objects detected on the sea bed were parts of the plane, and was planning to dock today to pick up more equipment.
"We are determined to find ... the black box," he told reporters yesterday.
"However, the depth of the Makassar Strait reaches 1,700m in places. We need very sophisticated technology to locate it," he said.
The black box transmits a signal, but it is low-powered and intended only help to locate the device within a relatively small area.
The crash follows a string of transport disasters, floods and landslides in Indonesia, including a ferry sinking that killed or left missing more than 400 people.
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