Recovering the Nearly-lost CVR of Lion Air JT 610

TEMPO.CO, Jakarta - The Indonesian Navy’s ship for hydrography and oceanography center (Pushidrosal) managed to recover the cockpit voice recorder (CVR) belonging to the crashed Lion Air flight JT 610 from the waters of Pakis Cape in Karawang, West Java.

“At 08:40 local time, diver Second Sgt. Satria Margono successfully recovered the CVR,” said Navy’s Rear Admiral Harjo Susmoro today. “The ship (KRI Spica-934) recovered the CVR at the coordinates of 05 48 46,503 S - 107 07 36,728 E,” he said. 

After the team picked up the location, 18 divers together with three Kopaska (Indonesian Navy's Special Frogmen Squad) members were mobilized with the KRI Spica-934 from the Jakarta International Container Terminal (JICT) 2 port at Tanjung Priok on January 8. 

Read: KNKT Issues 2 Recommendations Following Lion Air Crash

Equipped with Multibeam Echosounder (MBES), Sub Bottom Profiling (SBP), Magnetometer, Side Scan Sonar, ADCP and HIPAP, the ship—spearheaded by Lt. Col. Hengky Iriawan—only had 15 days to recover the CVR, which only emitted a signal for 90 days since the plane crashed on October 29, 2018.

“We only had 15 days left [to recover it],” said Harjo.

In Close Proximity to the Recovered FDR

Harjo explained the recovery effort was centered on an area of 5 x 5 meters believed to be the whereabouts of the CVR. The precise location of Lion Air JT 610’s CVR that was recovered today was just 50-meters from where the plane’s flight data recorder (FDR) was recovered on November 1, 2018. 

Lion Air JT 610, which used a Boeing 737 Max 8, crashed into the waters of Pakis Cape in Karawang on October 29, 2018, just 12 minutes after it took off from the Soekarno-Hatta International Airport at 06:32 Western Indonesia Time (WIB). 

M YUSUF MANURUNG