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Indonesia Hunts Seabed for Crashed Lion Air Jetliner


 
 
Search-and-rescue teams recover personal items from Lion Air flight JT610 at Tanjung Priok on Tuesday.
Ulet Ifansasti/Getty Images
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JAKARTA, Indonesia—Search crews deployed underwater equipment Tuesday to map the floor of the Java Sea in their search for a Lion Air jetliner as investigators gathered evidence to determine what caused the new Boeing 737 Max 8 aircraft with 189 people on board to crash.

Soerjanto Tjahjono, the head of Indonesia’s National Transportation Safety Committee, which is tasked with investigating the crash, said teams were using sonar tools to locate the fuselage and data recorders of the plane, which plunged into the sea Monday shortly after takeoff.

“Once we find signs of metal, we’ll deploy underwater beacon locaters to find the black boxes,” Mr. Tjahjono said, estimating that pings emitting from the flight data recorder and cockpit voice recorder could be detected from a little over a mile.

Search at Sea

New Boeing 737 model went missing shortly after takeoff from Jakarta to Pangkal Pinang.

MALAYSIA

Singapore

INDONESIA

Pangkal Pinang

Crash site

Java Sea

Jakarta

100 miles

100 km

Source: Lion Air

Mr. Tjahjono said he was questioning Lion Air about a problem the jet experienced Sunday on a flight from Bali to Jakarta, seeking clarity on “what the problem was and how they handled it.” The airline has said that the plane experienced a “technical issue” that was resolved prior to Monday’s fatal flight.

Data collected by Flightradar24, a flight-tracking network, indicated that the plane suffered from possible erratic speed and altitude readings on both the flight that crashed and the previous flight, including a dip in altitude that a pilot described as unusual.

Mr. Tjahjono said that he was focused on finding the recorders, or black boxes, and that his team was also gathering the flight log, control-tower data, maintenance records and pilot records to aid the investigation.

The loss of Lion Air Flight 610 was the first major accident involving the Boeing 737 MAX 8, a new variant of the company’s popular single-aisle 737. Officials say no one is likely to have survived the crash.

Air-traffic controllers lost contact with Flight 610 about 13 minutes after it took off from Jakarta’s main airport for Pangkal Pinang, a city on the island of Bangka. The Transportation Ministry said the pilots had requested to return to the Jakarta airport before disappearing from radar.

Rescue workers said that they have found human remains floating in the area where the plane went down, sending 24 body bags containing body parts to a police hospital for DNA identification. However, they have yet to locate the fuselage, believed to be on the seabed about 115 feet deep.

The search area was widened from five to 10 nautical miles from where the plane is believed to have crashed, said Didi Hamzar, director of preparedness for the search-and-rescue agency. The search was being conducted in good weather by 50 divers, 35 boats and three aircraft.

Flight 610’s captain was Bhavye Suneja, an Indian from New Delhi, and co-pilot Harvino, an Indonesian. Mr. Suneja joined Lion in 2011, according to his LinkedIn profile.

Lion Air said that Mr. Suneja had more than 6,000 hours of flying experience, while Mr. Harvino, who like many Indonesians has one name, had more than 5,000 hours.

Rescuers say they’ve found debris and body parts off the coast of Jakarta at the presumed location where an Indonesian jetliner carrying 189 people went down minutes after takeoff. Photo: Getty Images

The Boeing 737 MAX 8 jet was delivered to Lion Air in August. It was fitted with CFM International Leap-1B engines, which along with other technological improvements make the planes more than 10% more fuel-efficient than older variants of similar jets.

Lion Air is a major customer for Boeing’s Max 8 and other variants of its 737 jet, and for rival Airbus’s single-aisle A320s.

The investigation is at an early stage and authorities have given no indication that an equipment fault led to the accident. Boeing said it is providing technical assistance to the probe, while CFM said it is standing by to offer assistance.

U.S. aviation regulators will be closely monitoring the probe, which comes amid efforts by the Federal Aviation Administration to streamline procedures for certifying new aircraft.

Lion Air, formally known as PT Lion Mentari Airlines, is one of the biggest budget airlines in Asia and is owned by Indonesian tycoon Rusdi Kirana.

The carrier has had a patchy safety record. In April 2013, another new Boeing crashed into shallow water short of the runway on the resort island of Bali. All 108 passengers and crew were rescued. The crash was blamed on pilot error.

Indonesia has a long history of aviation disasters and its carriers were restricted for many years from flying to the U.S. and Europe for safety reasons. The government and airlines pledged to step up oversight and improve safety. The last restrictions on Indonesia airlines were lifted in June this year.

Write to Ben Otto at ben.otto@wsj.com and I Made Sentana at i-made.sentana@wsj.com

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