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Plane crash stumps officials
15/01/2007 10:39 - (SA)
Jakarta - Investigators said on Monday they remained unable to determine why an Indonesian commercial jetliner fell into the sea two weeks ago with 102 people aboard, despite recovering more pieces of wreckage.
"We haven't yet been able to draw a conclusion. It's still too early to say it was a scenario where the plane broke up in mid-air," Setyo Rahardjo, chairperson of the National Transportation Safety Committee (KNKT), told a parliamentary hearing.
"There are many possibilities on what happened," he said, according to the detik.com online news service.
"The number of pieces of wreckages is still too little for the KNKT to conduct an investigation," Rahardjo said. "We need at least 60% of the plane's body parts in order to determine the cause of the accident."
Officials have suggested that the plane may have exploded in mid-air or crashed into the sea and disintegrated.
Authorities were awaiting the arrival of a metal detector and undersea camera from the United States Navy help identify wreckage believed to be scattered on the sea floor. The equipment was expected to arrive in Indonesia on on Wednesday.
Black box not found
Investigators from the US national transportation safety board and Boeing Airlines were also in Sulawesi to assist Indonesian authorities.
Indonesian army soldiers in rubber boats, joined by local fishermen and volunteers, continued to comb beaches and waters on the south-west coast of Sulawesi Island for more debris from the Adam Air flight that vanished from radar screens on New Year's Day, said Budi, a rescue official in Makassar, the capital of South Sulawesi province.
The search was also focusing on finding the Boeing 737-400's black box, which contains flight recorder data that could explain what caused the disaster, other officials said.
On Sunday, rescue workers found fragments of human hair and scalp that might have been from passengers on the Adam Air flight, Budi said, adding that the remains would be sent for DNA testing.
Sapa-dpa
- SAPA
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