Indonesian Divers Retrieve Flight Recorder From Jet Crash Bloomberg 1/12/2021 Rieka Rahadiana, Eko Listiyorini and Alan Levin
(Bloomberg) Indonesian Navy divers retrieved one of the black boxes of the Sriwijaya Air Boeing Co. jet that plunged into the Java Sea shortly after takeoff on Saturday, a key step in discovering what caused the aircraft carrying 62 people to crash.
Black boxes are crucial to understanding what happened as they capture sound in the cockpit and monitor flight data. The aircraft in this instance was a nearly 27-year-old 737-500, not the much newer Boeing 737 Max just emerging from a 20-month grounding. The Max was grounded globally after two crashes, including a Lion Air flight in October 2018 that also plummeted into Indonesia’s Java Sea.