Sriwijaya Air crash search suspended due to bad weather

The search for one of the black boxes from the Sriwijaya Air passenger jet that crashed in the Java Sea on Saturday has been suspended due to bad weather, Indonesian officials said. Sriwijaya Air Flight 182 plunged into the sea with 62 people on board shortly after taking off from Jakarta at 2:36 p.m. Rescue workers have been bringing human remains and plane parts ashore for identification. The jet’s flight-data recorder was retrieved Tuesday, but the other black box that captures pilot communications and sounds from the cockpit hasn’t been recovered. “The weather is still not conducive, so operations that are focused on underwater haven’t been carried out for the safety of the divers,” Bambang Suryo Aji, a director at the National Search and Rescue Agency, said during a televised briefing. The locator beacons on both boxes were dislodged by the force of impact. The retrieved flight-data recorder is “in relatively good shape,” Indonesia’s National Transportation Safety Committee Chairman Soerjanto Tjahjono said. The box is being dried out and the contents should be downloaded within five days, he said. The plane was a Boeing 737-500. It had been in storage due to the coronavirus pandemic, which has forced airlines around the world to park away aircraft due to a lack of flying demand. <br/>