The remains of the missing Boeing, illustration -

Achmad Ibrahim / AP / SIPA

The crew of the crashed Boeing off Indonesia with 62 people on board did not send a distress signal before falling at sea, an investigation official said on Monday as divers search the remains of the plane and the black boxes.

A recording of crew communications with air traffic controllers reveals routine dialogues and no exchanges before Sriwijaya Air's Boeing 737-500 plunges some 10,000 feet into the sea in less than a minute on Saturday, Nurcahyo said. Utomo, Indonesian Transportation Safety Agency (NTSC) investigator.

“It's like a normal conversation and there is nothing to worry about,” he explained.

"There's no mention of an emergency or anything like that."

Preliminary data suggests that "most likely" the aircraft was still intact when it hit the water.

“But we don't know at this stage what caused the crash,” insisted the investigator.

Lots of debris spotted in the sea

A vast search operation involving some 2,600 rescuers and soldiers made it possible to locate the signal from two black boxes of the device at some 23 meters deep that divers are still looking for.

Images released by the navy show a seabed littered with debris where relief workers recovered many debris, pieces of fuselage and human remains.

The latter are transferred to a police hospital where specialists seek to identify them using DNA samples taken from relatives of the victims.

Police said they identified a first victim on Monday thanks to the fingerprint of one of his hands that came to the surface.

“The team (…) managed to identify one of the victims of the accident, Okky Bisma”.

He is a 29-year-old flight attendant.

All 62 passengers and crew on the half-full flight were Indonesians.

Ten children were on board, including 3 under the age of three.

Several hypotheses retained

The investigation into the crash, the latest in a series of air disasters in Indonesia, could take months.

Aviation experts have pointed out that flight data indicates that the aircraft deviated sharply from its intended course before dropping abruptly some 10,000 feet (3,000 meters) in less than a minute, before plunging into the sea. from Java.

They believe that the bad weather - torrential rains which had delayed take-off - piloting errors or a technical problem could have been factors of the tragedy.

Stephen Wright, professor of aviation systems at the Finnish University of Tampere, notes that the plane's relatively low speed was a warning sign.

"Something dramatic happened after takeoff".

The company's first fatal accident

Low-cost company Sriwijaya Air, which flies to destinations in Indonesia and Southeast Asia, did not provide information on what may have happened in the 26-year-old aircraft, previously operated by Continental Airlines and United. Airlines in the United States.

This is the first fatal crash involving Sriwijaya since the company's inception in 2003. But the airline industry in Indonesia has seen regular tragedies in recent years and several airlines from that country were banned in Europe until 2018. .

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