Indonesia finds black box part of crashed Russia jet
16 May 2012 08:33 am
An Indonesian search team has found part of the black box of a Russian Sukhoi Superjet plane that crashed killing all 45 people on board.
The plane vanished 50 minutes after taking off from Jakarta for a brief demonstration flight on 9 May.
The voice recorder, which was badly burned and had lost its distinctive orange colour, was found about 100m from the tail of the plane.
The flight data recorder remains missing, officials say.
Earlier reports suggested that both parts were recovered.
"The thing that we found is CVR or cockpit voice recorder," Daryatmo, the head of the National Search and Rescue Agency, said during a press conference.
"I asked the controllers in the field and all rescuers, especially the rescue team from military and police to continue searching for FDR (flight data recorder)," said the official, who goes by one name.
Tatang Kurniadi, who heads the National Transportation Safety Commission, said the data from the device that was found would be analysed in Indonesia with help from Russian experts.
It will take between two to three weeks for any details to be revealed, says the BBC's Karishma Vaswani in Jakarta.
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Eight Russian pilots and technicians, Indonesian airline representatives and journalists were among those said to be on board the plane.
The plane took off from east Jakarta's Halim Perdanakusuma airport at 14:00 (07:00 GMT) on 9 May, on its second flight of the day.
At 14:50, it was recorded as dropping from 10,000ft (3,000m) to 6,000ft near Salak, a peak measuring 7,200ft (2,200m).
Villagers living in the area reported seeing a plane flying low into the mountain area.
The crash came with Sukhoi officials on an Asia-wide tour to show off their aircraft to airline firms.
The Superjet, a mid-range airliner that can carry up to 100 people, is military plane-maker Sukhoi's first commercial aviation plane.
It was created by a joint venture, majority-owned by Sukhoi, with Italy's Finmeccanica and a number of other foreign and Russian firms also involved.
(Source : www.bbc.co.uk)