Plane That Crashed in Indonesia Didn’t Fly for Nine Months

The Sriwijaya Air jet that crashed on Saturday didn’t fly for approximately nine months past year, with air travel seriously lessened for the reason that of the coronavirus pandemic, Indonesia’s transportation ministry stated, as research crews pulled one particular of the plane’s so-termed black packing containers from the Java Sea.

The Boeing Co. 737-500 was inspected and declared airworthy prior to resuming flying functions, the ministry stated.

The Indonesian carrier’s aircraft with sixty two people today on board went down minutes immediately after using off from the country’s capital, Jakarta. There are thought to be no survivors.

Divers and research crew, who grappled with sharp debris and lower underwater visibility, managed to recuperate the plane’s flight-info recorder on Tuesday, an essential early action in uncovering why SJ182 crashed.

The airplane had stopped working in late March, months immediately after Indonesia announced its first Covid-19 circumstance, the transportation ministry stated. The aircraft commenced flying once again on Dec. 19, immediately after clearing an inspection by the ministry’s Air Transportation Directorate General, the ministry stated.