The second black box of the Sriwijaya Air Boeing which crashed off Indonesia in January with 62 people on board has been found, the transport ministry said on Wednesday.
The ministry announced a press conference on “the discovery of the cockpit voice recorder”, which was confirmed to AFP by investigators.
These recordings of conversations with the crew and with the control tower should provide important information for the ongoing investigation to determine the causes of the still unexplained accident.
The aircraft, a Boeing 737-500, plunged some 3,000 meters in less than a minute on January 9 before disappearing into the Java Sea a few minutes after takeoff.
The crew had not issued a warning or reported a technical problem before the accident and the aircraft was likely intact when it dived in the water, investigators said.
According to a preliminary report from the Indonesian Transport Safety Agency, an “anomaly” of the autothrottles, which manage the thrust of the aircraft, has been detected, but the investigation will continue to determine the causes of the crash.
The first black box, containing data from on-board devices, was found shortly after the accident. But divers continued to search for the second black box, which had lost its beacon, on the seabed off Jakarta.
This accident is the first fatal involving the Indonesian regional company Sriwijaya Air since its inception in 2013.
But the airline industry in Indonesia has experienced regular tragedies in recent years.