A ship equipped with sophisticated technology resumed search for the cockpit voice recorder and the remains of victims of a fatal flight of Lion air JT 6-10, investigator said here on Thursday.
All 189 people on board were killed on Oct. 29 in the waters off western Indonesia.
Divers have retrieved the flight data recorder of the brand new Boeing 737 Max 8 jet from the sea floor of Tanjung Karawang water off West Java province, where the aircraft plunged shortly after taking off.
The recovery of the missing cockpit voice recorder is essential for determining what caused the crash, investigators from the national transport safety committee said.
A MPV Everest ship operated by a Dutch firm, which is hired by Lion Air, kicked off the search on Thursday morning, said Haryo Satmiko, deputy chairman of the committee.
"The MPV Everest arrived at the crash site on Wednesday night and resumed search this morning," he said.
The mission is undertaken around the clock and will last for ten days. If the mission fails in finding the cockpit voice recorder, a further evaluation will be carried out, Satmiko added.
The fuselage of the aircraft and the remains of 64 victims who have not been recovered would also be the targets of the mission, he said.
The resumption was financed by Lion Air which had spent a 38 billion rupiah (some 2.6 million U.S. dollars) to pay the Dutch company following the request of the family members to continue search for remains of their loved ones.
The preliminary report of the crash gleaned data from the flight data recorder unveiled that the pilots struggled to control the plane's anti-stalling system just before the plane plunged into the water.
