New Insights Revealed from Sriwijaya Air SJ182 Data and Crash Site

TEMPO.CO, Jakarta - The National Transportation Safety Commission (KNKT) on Tuesday suspects the turbo engine of the fateful Sriwijaya Air SJ182 was running until the last moment of impact when the aircraft crashed into the shallow sea of Thousand Islands (Kepulauan Seribu). 

KNKT refers to the analysis based on the data from ADS-B radar from AirNav Indonesia. “Based on the data, we suspect that the engine was still on as the aircraft hit the water,” said KNKT Chairman Soerjanto Tjahjono on January 12. 

According to its timeline, Sriwijaya SJ182 on January 9, 2021, departed from Soekarno-Hatta Airport at 14:36 Western Indonesia Time (WIB) heading northwest. It reached an altitude of 10,900 feet at 14:40, then started to drop its altitude until the last data showed it was at 250 feet. 

The latter detail of Sriwijaya Air’s altitude made KNKT believe that the aircraft’s systems were operating and were able to send back data after it started to fall. 

The Narrow Spread of Debris

KNKT added that field observations from the KRI Rigel vessel calculated that the spread of the aircraft debris was within the width of 100 meters and length up to 400 meters, which is consistent with an aircraft that did not rupture mid-air before it crashed into the ocean.

Another major finding in the field that corresponds to the mid-flight data was recovered by the National Search and Rescue Agency (Basarnas). Their data showed the turbine disc was discovered with damaged fan blades which shows that the 737’s engine was running as it fell. 

Black Boxes Triangulated

Moreover, the KNKT announced that the search for the black boxes or flight data recorder (FDR) and the cockpit voice recorder (CVR) from the Sriwijaya Air SJ182 debris continues. The search team had detected the signal from the black boxes’ beacon and had triangulated the location to be within a 90-meter range. 

Read: Sriwijaya SJ182 Crash; Lapan Detected No Extreme Weather During Flight

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