Black box retrieved from debris

JAKARTA - Indonesian divers on Thursday retrieved a black box from a Lion Air passenger jet that crashed into the shallow sea off the coast of the capital, killing all 189 people onboard.

It should provide clues to what went wrong after the plane lost contact with ground staff just 13 minutes after taking off early on Monday from Jakarta on its way to the tin-mining town of Pangkal Pinang.

The device, identified as the flight data recorder, will be handed over to Indonesia's transportation safety committee, or KNKT, authorities said.

The plane's black boxes should help explain why the almost-new Boeing 737 MAX 8 jet went down.

It could take up to three weeks to download data and up to six months to analyze it, Soerjanto Tjahjono, the head of the KNKT, said on Wednesday.

Tjahjono said the KNKT has held a closed-door meeting with representatives of the crashed plane producer, Boeing, and officials of the United States' National Transportation Safety Board over the crash.

With media speculating on the airworthiness of the aircraft, the Transport Ministry suspended for 120 days Lion Air's maintenance and engineering director, fleet maintenance manager and the release engineer who gave the jet permission to fly on Monday.

President Joko Widodo had also ordered a review of all regulations relating to flight safety, Sumadi said.

The government was also considering reviewing airfares and may increase ticket prices charged by low-cost carriers, he said, without providing details.

Privately owned Lion Air, founded in 1999, said the aircraft had been in operation since August, adding that it had been airworthy and the pilot and co-pilot had 11,000 hours of flying time between them.

The crash was the worst airline disaster in Indonesia in more than two decades and renewed concerns about safety in its fast-growing aviation industry.

Reuters - Xinhua - Ap

(China Daily 11/02/2018 page12)