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Adam Air To Retrieve Black Box From New Year's Day Crash
Has Deal With Salvage Firm, To Start Work In July
It was a crash that took 102 lives that has yet to see closure for the families, as well as the aviation community.
Reuters reported that Indonesian budget carrier Adam Air is close to signing on with a salvage firm to retrieve the black box of Adam Air's ill-fated Flight 574, a Boeing 737-400.
As reported by ANN, Indonesian rescue teams searched for the missing Adam Air Boeing that went down New Year's Day.
Late January, the USNS Mary Sears, searching off the western coast of Sulawesi island, detected what the US Navy believed to be signals from the cockpit voice and flight data recorders of the aircraft, but those recorders were never retrieved, as ANN reported.
"We have a deal with US-based Phoenix International to retrieve the black box," Adam Air chief executive Adam Suherman told Reuters. "The plan will go ahead in early July."
He added, "Retrieving the black box would not only serve the interest of Adam Air but would serve the interest of the aviation community in general."
Experts said in January that retrieving the flight recorder, set up to give off a signal for 30 days to aid detection, may be difficult and it could be lying in waters as deep as 5,600 ft.
Locating the black box may be even more challenging as it may have shifted or may be buried under sediment.
The 17-year-old plane was heading from Surabaya, in East Java, to Manado in northern Sulawesi, when it vanished in bad weather. The plane made no distress call, although the pilot reported concerns over crosswinds.
Metal fragments, including the plane's tail section, were found on the bottom of the ocean floor January 12 and confirmed to be from the wreckage of an Adam Air 737, as ANN reported.
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An example of a cockpit voice recorder.
Indonesia budget airline Adam Air has reached an agreement with United States marine salvage firm Phoenix International to retrieve the cockpit voice recorder and flight data recorder (or "black boxes") from Adam Air Flight 574, a Boeing 737 aircraft that crashed into the sea on New Year's Day near Sulawesi, Indonesia during a scheduled domestic passenger flight, killing all 102 on board.

According to Adam Air chairman Adam Suherman the salvage operation will be conducted in July.

Previous disputes had left doubts over whether the devices would be retrieved at all, with both the government and Adam Air placing responsibility for funding the operation on each other. Indonesia does not have the equipment or the funds to conduct the operation itself, and had originally asked Japan, France and the US for help. They eventually announced that they would not pay for the operation, neither could they force Adam Air to.
A flight data recorder.
However, Adam Air took it upon themselves to retrieve the recorders, culminating in this agreement with Phoenix. The lack of either recorder has thus far made determining the cause of the disaster extremely difficult.