Lion Air crash was so intense it tore apart black box, prolonging mystery about disaster’s cause
- The high speed of the crash ‘fragmented’ the Boeing 737 and also destroyed the recovered black box’s external case and electronics
- But the crucial memory core appears to be intact, and the hunt continues for the second black box flight recorder
Indonesia is stepping up its hunt for the second black box on a crashed Boeing jet after four days of scouring the sea only yielded a single damaged flight data recorder, prolonging the mystery on what downed the Lion Air plane.
The devices are built to withstand high-impact crashes, and the shattering of the black box shows how violently the 737 Max 8 jet plunged and broke into pieces in Monday’s crash, which claimed 189 lives.
An expert team from the US National Transportation Safety Board, Federal Aviation Administration, Boeing and General Electric Co, the maker of aircraft engines, is assisting in the investigation, according to the Indonesian government.
National Transportation Safety Committee Chief Soerjanto Tjahjono told reporters the engine of the aircraft “was still healthy” and the plane flew at high speed when it nosedived into the sea.
“So we can confirm that the impact was high energy that caused the plane to be highly fragmented, broken into small pieces,” Soerjanto said.
The force of the impact tore off the black box’s exterior electronics and some of the recorder’s structure.