Black Box from Lion Air plane crash in Indonesia has been retrieved

The “black box” from the Lion Air jet that plummeted into the Java Sea after taking off from Indonesia earlier this week has been recovered.

Divers’ discovery of the flight data recorder could answer questions about why the two-month-old Boeing 737 MAX 8 plane, carrying 189 people, tragically crashed. No survivors have been found.

On Monday, the aircraft crashed just minutes after taking off from Jakarta in what was described as the worst airline disaster in Indonesia since 1977, when 234 people died on a Garuda flight near Medan. The crash renewed concerns about safety in Indonesia’s fast-growing aviation industry.

The location of the black box find was about 500 metres northwest of the coordinates where the plane lost contact and at a depth of 30 metres, said the search and rescue agency.  “We will process the data contained in this FDR as part of the investigation process to find out the cause of the crash,” said Bambang Irawan, an investigator with the National Transport Safety Commission. “We cannot say how long it takes to process data in a black box, but of course we will try as soon as possible.”