Lion Air: Indonesian rescue diver dies while searching for victims of jet crash near Jakarta
An Indonesian rescue diver has died in the search for a passenger jet that crashed early this week near Jakarta, killing all 189 people on board, search and rescue agency Basarnas said on Saturday.
Key points:
Anto died around 4pm on Friday afternoon, but it was not immediately clear how he perished
His family chose not to conduct an autopsy and asked for his remains to be buried immediately
Anto had been involved in other missions including the search for an AirAsia jet that crashed off Borneo in 2014
News of the diver's death came as Indonesia's search and rescue chief said divers had reported seeing the fuselage and engines of the crashed Lion Air jet on the seafloor.
"Syachrul Anto, 48, died on Friday while diving to search for victims of the crashed Lion [Air] aircraft," the agency said via its Instagram account, @sar_nasional.
"Deepest condolences for the passing of a humanitarian hero from the Indonesian Diving Rescue Team," Basarnas chief Syaugi said in a news release.
Mr Anto died at around 4:00pm on Friday, it said, but it was not immediately clear how he perished.
PHOTO: Indonesian navy frogmen try to retrieve debris from the water during a search operation. (AP: Tatan Syuflana)Mr Anto's family chose not to conduct an autopsy and asked for his remains to be buried immediately, Basarnas spokesman Yusuf Latif told Reuters by text message.
Among other missions, Mr Anto was also one of the main divers involved in the search for an AirAsia jet that crashed off Borneo in late 2014, he said.
PHOTO: The crash was the worst airline disaster in Indonesia in more than two decades. (AP: Tatan Syuflana)Rescue divers have played critical roles in recovering human remains for identification and finding out what happened to the near-new Boeing 737 MAX that crashed early on Monday into the Java Sea, 13 minutes after it took off from Jakarta.
As of Saturday a total of 73 body bags, few containing intact remains, had been recovered from the site.
More debris found by divers
Divers have been searching for a second black box from the jet, as investigators try to get data from a partly-damaged recorder recovered from sunken wreckage on Thursday.
Indonesia's search and rescue chief Muhammad Syaugi said that along with the fuselage, two engines and more landing gear had been found by divers.
"I haven't seen it myself but I got information from some divers that they have seen the fuselage," he said.
The flight data recorder was recovered on Thursday and Mr Syuagi said a "low ping signal" was detected by a sonar locator that could be the missing black box voice recorder.
The pilot of flight JT610 had asked for, and received, permission to turn back to Jakarta, but what went wrong remains a mystery.
"The team have been hearing the 'ping' sound from another black box for two days," Soerjanto Tjahjono told Reuters.
The sea is only 30 metres deep at the crash site, but strong currents and nearby pipelines have hampered the search.
While victims' relatives are desperate to know what happened, the investigation of the first crash of a Boeing 737 MAX is also the focus of scrutiny by the global aviation industry.
Results of a preliminary investigation will be made public after 30 days, one official on the investigation team said.
Indonesia is one of the world's fastest-growing aviation markets but its safety record has been patchy.
Its transport safety panel investigated 137 serious aviation incidents from 2012 to 2017.
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Jakarta (CNN)Divers searching for the wreckage of Indonesian Lion Air Flight 610 have found the main fuselage and claim they can now hear a signal from the aircraft's missing cockpit voice recorder, the head of Indonesia's Search and Rescue Agency said Saturday.
Diving teams are working to locate the device, commonly known as a black box, which could help investigators piece together the final moments of the brand new Boeing 737 before it crashed, killing all 189 people on board.
The plane's flight data recorder was located Thursday, but investigators say they have not yet been able to extract any information from it.
Muhammad Syaugi, head of Indonesia's Search and Rescue Agency, Basarnas, told reporters in Jakarta on Saturday that divers had now heard a "ping" from the second black box.
"Although the sound is quite weak, it came from the spot not far from the ship 'Victory,'" he added, referring to one of the vessels involved in the search effort.
The ill-fated Lion Air flight JT 610's flight data recorder was recovered from the Java Sea on Thursday.
Syaugi said he had "received information that we found the fuselage" from the team on location, although he had not yet seen it himself. More than 100 divers are currently working in different zones conducting various searches, he added.
The fast-moving currents and muddy waters of the crash site in the Java Sea have hindered recovery efforts since the plane came down Monday shortly after taking off from Jakarta.
Diver's death
News of progress in the search effort followed confirmation earlier Saturday that one of the divers involved in the search for victims and wreckage from the flight had died.
Syahrul Anto, 48, was found unconscious Friday after his diving partner noticed he had disappeared, said Syaugi. He was immediately brought back to shore and was attended by doctors but Syaugi said that "God had a different plan."
Anto was a qualified, senior diver "who devoted his life for our country," Syaugi said.
Syaugi, who is responsible for the diving team, said those involved "are very qualified divers, outstanding divers, with long experience. They are come from Navy special task forces, from the police, from the Basarnas team, and some are volunteers from diving clubs."
People watch on the beach as a rescue team prepares its boat before heading to the crash site on Monday.
'Broken parts' in flight data recorder
Investigators say they have not been able to download anything from the flight data recorder because "there are some broken parts" in the device, Indonesia's National Transportation Safety Commission said.
Haryo Satmiko, the agency's deputy chief, said Saturday that Boeing and the US National Transportation Safety Board are flying special equipment to Indonesia to assist local authorities in extracting that valuable information.
Photos: In photos: Lion Air plane crashes off Indonesia
Indonesian Navy divers recover a flight data recorder on Thursday, November 1, from the underwater wreckage of Lion Air flight JT 610 in the Java Sea, north of Karawang, Indonesia.
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Photos: In photos: Lion Air plane crashes off Indonesia
Families of the victims look through personal items that were recovered from the wreckage.
The recorder should contain information on how the plane's systems were performing in the moments before the crash.
Authorities had hoped its discovery would help explain why the new Boeing 737 crashed, killing all 189 people on board but it's unclear if they will be able retrieve any clues.
An aviation official with knowledge of the crash investigation told CNN on Friday that the recorder was so deeply submerged in water that it was hard to get the data off it.
Investigators search for flight data recorder 02:56
Analysts say finding the cockpit voice recorder is imperative if investigators are to determine whether the crash has implications for other airlines collectively operating thousands of Boeing 737 flights around the world each day.
"We need to know whether there is a Lion Air problem, a specific problem to this plane, or whether it is a general wider problem for 737s," said Geoffrey Thomas, editor-in-chief of airline rating agency, Airlineratings.com.
It's not yet clear what condition the main fuselage is in. The wheels of the jetliner and a plane engine turbine were found on Friday, the largest pieces recovered at that point.
Most of the plane's wreckage remains deep in the water and it's so shattered that analysts say much of the recovery is likely to be done by hand or with nets.
A wheel from the crashed Lion Air Flight JT610 was pulled from the sea by Indonesian authorities on Nov. 2, 2018.
David Soucie, an aviation safety analyst for CNN, said a big challenge for divers would be to identify and separate any body parts from other debris.
"You look at the insulation and the seat backs, the seat cushions can easily be mistaken for body parts and vice versa," Soucie said.
Only one victim has been identified
Flight 610 was supposed to take its passengers on a one-hour journey from Jakarta to Pangkal Pinang on the island of Bangka. Instead it crashed 13 minutes after takeoff. The pilots had asked to turn around but didn't transmit an emergency call.
At least 65 body bags have been gathered since the start of the search-and-rescue operation, though each bag could contain remains of more than one person.
Children's shoes, wallets, backpacks confirm fates of Lion Air victims
Investigators will have to rely on DNA samples to identify victims because of the condition and size of the remains found. Police have 181 DNA samples from victims' families and are working to match them to 272 human tissue samples.
Lisda Cancer, head of Disaster Victim Identification, told reporters Friday that only one person has been identified so far -- a female whose identity was confirmed through a fingerprint.
On Wednesday, authorities started bringing relatives to the port to identify victims' personal belongings, which lay piled up next to cushions and other debris that appeared to be from the aircraft.
Epi Syamsul Qomar, whose 24-year-old son was on the flight, broke down in tears when he recognized his son's shoe.
"I saw my son's black sneaker," he told CNN. "I also saw his bank checkbook."
Pilot reported plane issues
The jetliner had experienced technical issues the day before on another route, passengers aboard that flight revealed to CNN.
On Sunday the Boeing 737 Max 8 aircraft -- a new plane, which had only around 800 flying hours on the clock -- had flown Lion Air's Bali-Jakarta route and had experienced a significant drop in altitude, passenger Robbi Gaharu said.
"I thought maybe it was caused by turbulence. After 10 minutes in the air the plane dropped as if it was losing power. People panicked. It dropped about 400 feet," said Gaharu, adding that he had confirmed the height of the drop on a flight-tracking website. He said the drop felt like falling into "a really, really deep hole."
Lion Air confirmed to CNN that the aircraft that crashed on Monday had been used to fly the JT43 Bali-Jakarta route the day before, and Indonesian authorities confirmed that the pilot on Sunday's flight reported a problem with one of the plane's instruments.
Capt. Daniel Putut Kuncoro Adi, managing director of Lion Group, said that all information had been handed over to Indonesia's National Transportation Safety Commission and he could not answer any questions about the fault because of a nondisclosure agreement signed to accommodate the investigation.
CNN's Eric Levenson, Masrur Jamaluddin, Yosef Riadi, Edi Amin and Nicole Chavez contributed to this report.
