Grieving friends and relatives gathered at a Jakarta cemetery yesterday for the funeral of a flight attendant on a crashed Indonesian passenger jet, as divers restarted their hunt for its second black box.
Okky Bisma, 29, was the first confirmed victim of Saturday’s disaster after fingerprints from his retrieved hand were matched to those on a government identity database.
There were 62 crew and passengers, including 10 children, on Flight SJ182, a Sriwijaya Air Boeing 737-500, which plunged about 3,000m in less than 1 minute before slamming into the Java Sea just after takeoff from Jakarta.
Photo: Antara Foto / Sigid Kurniawan / Reuters
At least five other victims have since been identified as forensic examiners sort through mangled human remains retrieved from the wreckage-littered seabed in the hope of matching DNA with relatives.
Funeral traditions in Indonesia, the world’s biggest Muslim-majority nation, call for a quick burial of the dead, but the identification process could take weeks or more, prolonging the agony for some families.
Nearly 270 divers were on hand as authorities restarted the underwater hunt, which was called off a day earlier due to bad weather and rough seas.
“The main focus [yesterday] will be the diving,” Indonesian Search and Rescue Agency director of operations Rasman M.S. Said. “We’re not just looking for one thing — victims, the cockpit voice recorder and debris are all priorities.”
Investigators have said they are working to read critical details on a flight data device that had already been salvaged, with the focus now on finding the plane’s cockpit voice recorder.
Black box data include the speed, altitude and direction of the plane, as well as flight crew conversations, and helps explain nearly 90 percent of all crashes, aviation experts say.
So far authorities have been unable to explain why the 26-year-old plane crashed just four minutes after takeoff, bound for Pontianak on Borneo Island, a 90-minute flight away.
It had experienced pilots at the controls, and preliminary evidence showed that the crew did not declare an emergency or report technical problems as it sharply deviated from its planned course just before the crash, authorities said.
Bad weather, pilot error, poor maintenance and mechanical failure were among possible factors, aviation analysts said.
As the COVID-19 pandemic hammered demand for air travel, the jet — previously flown by US-based Continental Airlines and United Airlines — had been parked in a hangar for about nine months before it was put back into service last month after being declared airworthy, the Indonesian Ministry of Transportation said.
Since then, it had flown more than 130 times before the accident, flight tracking data showed.
The crash probe is likely to take months, but a preliminary report is expected in 30 days.
SEEKING CHANGE: A hospital worker said she did not vote in previous elections, but ‘now I can see that maybe my vote can change the system and the country’ Voting closed yesterday across the Solomon Islands in the south Pacific nation’s first general election since the government switched diplomatic allegiance from Taiwan to Beijing and struck a secret security pact that has raised fears of the Chinese navy gaining a foothold in the region. The Solomon Islands’ closer relationship with China and a troubled domestic economy weighed on voters’ minds as they cast their ballots. As many as 420,000 registered voters had their say across 50 national seats. For the first time, the national vote also coincided with elections for eight of the 10 local governments. Esther Maeluma cast her vote in the
Nearly half of China’s major cities are suffering “moderate to severe” levels of subsidence, putting millions of people at risk of flooding, especially as sea levels rise, according to a study of nationwide satellite data released yesterday. The authors of the paper, published by the journal Science, found that 45 percent of China’s urban land was sinking faster than 3mm per year, with 16 percent at more than 10mm per year, driven not only by declining water tables, but also the sheer weight of the built environment. With China’s urban population already in excess of 900 million people, “even a small portion
UNSETTLING IMAGES: The scene took place in front of TV crews covering the Trump trial, with a CNN anchor calling it an ‘emotional and unbelievably disturbing moment’ A man who doused himself in an accelerant and set himself on fire outside the courthouse where former US president Donald Trump is on trial has died, police said yesterday. The New York City Police Department (NYPD) said the man was declared dead by staff at an area hospital. The man was in Collect Pond Park at about 1:30pm on Friday when he took out pamphlets espousing conspiracy theories, tossed them around, then doused himself in an accelerant and set himself on fire, officials and witnesses said. A large number of police officers were nearby when it happened. Some officers and bystanders rushed
HYPOCRISY? The Chinese Ministry of Foreign Affairs yesterday asked whether Biden was talking about China or the US when he used the word ‘xenophobic’ US President Joe Biden on Wednesday called for a hike in steel tariffs on China, accusing Beijing of cheating as he spoke at a campaign event in Pennsylvania. Biden accused China of xenophobia, too, in a speech to union members in Pittsburgh. “They’re not competing, they’re cheating. They’re cheating and we’ve seen the damage here in America,” Biden said. Chinese steel companies “don’t need to worry about making a profit because the Chinese government is subsidizing them so heavily,” he said. Biden said he had called for the US Trade Representative to triple the tariff rates for Chinese steel and aluminum if Beijing was