Indonesia detected signals on Sunday that could come from a flight recorder of a Sriwijaya Air jet that crashed into the sea after taking off from the capital Jakarta, as human body parts and suspected pieces of the plane were retrieved, Trend reports citing Reuters.
The Boeing 737-500 with 62 passengers and crew was headed to Pontianak in West Kalimantan before it disappeared on Saturday from radar screens four minutes after takeoff.
The crash is the first major airline incident in Indonesia since the crash of a Lion Air Boeing 737 Max in 2018 that killed all 189 passengers and crew. That plane also crashed into the Java Sea soon after takeoff from Soekarno-Hatta airport.
“We have detected signals in two points. This could be the black box - we will investigate,” Bagus Puruhito, chief of Indonesia’s search and rescue agency, told reporters aboard a military ship.
Graphic: Map showing flight path
Indonesian Navy official Wahyudin Arif told iNEWS that they have found suspected pieces of the plane fuselage of about one metre (three feet) in length, part of a tyre and human body parts.
Media reports said body parts had been taken to a police hospital for identification.
Search teams and fishermen earlier retrieved other debris and a section of an emergency chute believed to come from the jet in the seas off Jakarta.