Adam Air B737-400 fatal crash January 2007

[DX Wombat]

Orac, for the sakes of all the families and friends let's hope they have got it right this time and that it isn't wreckage from WW2 ships / aircraft.

[trwilliams]

I just want to thank you all for paying attention; I'm with the family in Bend and am using you as one of my sources of information. I wanted to see what the non-media and non-government had to say about this.

We appreciate it, thank you--

--Travis Williams--

[Kato747]

According to www.poskota.co/id , 3 fishermen, working to the north of the Bulumanuk Island, saw the aircraft in flames just before it impacted the sea 10km north of Sapudi Island. One of the fishermen said he was not certain, but the aircraft he saw was light red in colour (Adam Air's livery is white/Orange/Red).
There was no explanation as to when this info was given to Indo autorities, but judging from the earlier false reports from villagers, it seems likely that this "sighting" may have been treated with a grain of salt. Keep in mind that MOST eyewitnesses to any aircraft crash report seeing the aircraft in flames!
The Indonesian Navy HAS indeed located 3 "targets" off the coast of Mamuju, spread over about 6 km between the major "pings". The USN is on the way with a deep-sea recovery capable ship to assist the Indonesian Navy. Hope they have located Adam Air 574!
Before the Indo bashers climb on this..... NOTE that it was the Indo Navy who found the targets. THE USN is only helping with vastly advanced-tech capability to identify these metal masses. Yes, I'm a Yank, with ties to the USN as well!

FOR MELAX: Lighten up on the "Psychics" comments..... the local Bomo, Shaman, or even "Psychics" fulfill a place in this society every bit as germain as that of the local preacher, preist or Imam, or "Dion Warwick's Psychic Friends Network". Some are shysters, most really believe they can help. You don''t have to agree that they have the answers but stop slinging epithets at a culture you don't understand, OK?

[Kato747]

Mamuju is about 70-80nm N of Pare-Pare.... that's still on Sulawesi, about half way up the western side of the Sulawesi "Orchid". Not off NE tip of Java.
Remember the film "Krakatoa, East of Java"..........????? Sorry , but Krakatoa is west of Java, between Java and Sumatra..... Walt Disney has no sense of direction (geographical, at least)
Mamuju airport (MJU) would have been little use to them anyway... it's only 2329' long!

Sapudi Island is, indeed off Madura, significantly farther South. Confused? so am I!

[barit1]

NTSB Preliminary report

(If the link doesn't work, right-click on it, select Properties, then copy the URL & paste it in the browser address window)

[BD1959]

News Ltd is reporting that 3 objects have been found in 1km deep water (I'm ignoring the lawsuit bits!!).

How would it be possible for an aircraft to break up (even below the surface) and yet there be no surface wreckage??

BD

[EFHF]

Originally Posted by BD1959

How would it be possible for an aircraft to break up (even below the surface) and yet there be no surface wreckage??
BD

The storm which was capable of dispersing liferafts hundreds of km from the ferry disaster surely was also able to disperse any floating debris in a similar fashion, so if this is really the wreckage of PK-KKW, then it's expected that no floating debris has been found anywhere near the purported underwater location of the wreckage. Perhaps some of the debris will be found in the coming weeks washing ashore all around the Makassar Strait.

[vapilot2004]

We may know more later Wednesday

MAKASSAR, Indonesia (Reuters) - A U.S. navy ship helping hunt for an Indonesian plane missing for nine days should be able to shed more light later on Wednesday on a metal object found on the sea bed, an Indonesian navy commander said.
The search for an Adam Air Boeing 737-400 that vanished in bad weather on January 1 with 102 people aboard has chiefly focussed on large metal objects, possibly wreckage, detected on Monday by Indonesian ships using sonar in deep water north of Mamuju in west Sulawesi.
"It will take them until 10 p.m. (3 p.m. British time) tonight to confirm the exact position and to figure out what kind of object is down there," Moekhlas Sidik, commander of the navy's eastern fleet, said after returning from aboard a ship in the area.
He said that the USNS Mary Sears, an oceanographic survey ship, had confirmed the findings of an Indonesian ship of metal objects at three points and was focussing on one of the sites.
"Mary Sears has multi-beams to receive noise frequency that will enable them to form a silhouette. We are focussing on the coordinate that has the strongest ping," he told a news conference in Makassar, Sulawesi's largest city and where the search is being coordinated.
The spot being examined was 31 km (19 miles) north-west of Tanjung Rengas at a depth of 1,700 metres (5,600 ft), he added.

Link to entire Reuters UK story here.

[threemiles]

For those who want to ask Google maps where the point of last radar contact was enter this:
003°55'S 118°13' E
(As even the FAA seems not to be able to write down coordinates in a correct format these days).
Makassar ACC is using at least 6 MSSR radar stations within its FIR and there is certainly no radar shadowing at this spot, over water and only 100 NM right in front of the main radar site.

EDITED: it is the NTSB, not the FAA

[broadreach]

How ironic that we have such spectacular – and free - tools as Google Earth, with resolution that in places allows us to see peoples’ shadows on the ground, and yet a modern aircraft can disappear just as completely as would have been the case fifty years ago. And fifty years ago we couldn’t have picked up traces of metal 1,500m beneath the surface.

While following this thread I thought if the aircraft went into the sea there would be abundant flotsam which inevitably someone would report, therefore after eight + days and no news it seemed more likely it went down on land and now lay under the forest canopy. A closer look at the coastline and interior of Sulawesi - via Google Earth - is humbling; what a truly mammoth search job it must be. Moreso given the weather conditions that, as EFHF mentions above, could blow a liferaft such a distance from its launching.

[EFHF]

Originally Posted by threemiles

For those who want to ask Google maps where the point of last radar contact was enter this:
003°55'S 118°13' E
(As even the FAA seems not to be able to write down coordinates in a correct format these days).
Makassar ACC is using at least 6 MSSR radar stations within its FIR and there is certainly no radar shadowing at this spot, over water and only 100 NM right in front of the main radar site.

The earlier report of bearing 340° from WAAA (MKS) would put it about 60 km further due course 70° from that NTSB location.

However, from the fact that searches have been conducted all around Sulawesi, including checking at least 7 ELT signals over 400 km apart, seems to indicate that there isn't much confidence in any single clue as to the location of the aircraft (perhaps even the find of metal structures on the seabed). The sonar contact is according to latest reports at

The debris was roughly 2 1/2 miles from the West Sulawesi provincial capital of Mamuju at a depth of about 4,500 feet, he said.

which is about 100 km NNE of the last radar contact as reported by NTSB.

[jfill]

More Time Needed for Sonar Search

The Jan. 11 9PM (Jakarta time?) release of information about the Adam Air crash has been delayed. They need more time to analyse the sonar data from the USNS Mary Sears.

http://www.thejakartapost.com/detail...8172809&irec=0

[aardvark2zz]

Nobody mentions specifically the underwater acoustic pinger on the plane and the search for it !!?? Batteries won't last forever.
.

[EDLB]

Given that the pinger is of current design and batteries are still up to specification they should last 30 days. However the acoustic radius is only a few miles.
If it chrashed into the jungle I would assume that at least an ELT is working.
Has anybody here an idea about the likelyhood that the pinger and ELT was operational on this plane?
What is astonishingh, that there is so little reliable information, given that the place where it presumble vanished from the radar should have decent radar coverage.
Was there any transponder Mode C readout of height bevore it disapeared?
Christian

[CargoOne]

Originally Posted by aardvark2zz

Nobody mentions specifically the underwater acoustic pinger on the plane and the search for it !!?? Batteries won't last forever.
.

I have learned from last year Armavia A320 crash in Black Sea that receiving of FDR pinger signal is not very easy and even then it still makes a lot of efforts to locate the site. They knew more or less exactly where the crash was (it was very very close to the shore) and it took them around two weeks or so to locate FDR by ping and to recover it, now you should consider both Russian and French specialists were working hard from day one and having all kind of special equipment and knew where to search.

[jet_noseover]

Part of plane found in sea

http://www.radionz.co.nz/news/latest...sea_-_official


1:11pm on 11 Jan 2007

A part of the tail of an Indonesian jetliner that went missing 10 days ago with 102 people on board is reported to have been found in the sea off Sulawesi island.

The Makassar air base commander, Eddy Suyanto, said on Thursday the left tail's stabiliser number 65C25746-76 was found by a fisherman. He said the find was made 8km south of Pare Pare and 300m from the beach.

[Flightsimman]

News Reports In Australia That Part Of The Tail Found

Courtesy of "www.news.com.au"
From correspondents in Makassar, Indonesia
January 11, 2007 11:13am
Article from: Reuters
A PART of the tail of an Indonesian jetliner that went missing 10 days ago with 102 people on board has been found in the sea off Sulawesi island.
"This morning I announced that there has been a finding of a part of Adam Air. What was found was the left tail's stabiliser number 65C25746-76. This thing was found by a fisherman in Pare Pare," said Eddy Suyanto, the air base commander in Makassar.
"This thing was found 8km south of Pare Pare and 300m from the beach."

[Re-entry]

A body has been found in the sea. - Reuters

[EFHF]

The location from where the "stabilizer section" (looks more like a flight control surface such as a part of the elevator instead) was found is 200 km from where the underwater sonar contact is reported (and much further by sea around the beach line of Sulawesi) but probably incidentally relatively close (<50 km) to one of the many reports of ELT positions (the one tracked on the 2nd day of the disappearance, "30 kilometres northwest of Makassar" according to National Search and Rescue Board of Indonesia).

If the rest of the aircraft is really 200+ km away from the find of this floating part, that would be consistent with the power of the storm in dispersing any surface debris.

[vapilot2004]

Sad news from Washington Post via Reuters

Wreckage of Indonesian airliner found at sea
MAKASSAR, Indonesia (Reuters) - Pieces of an Indonesian airliner which vanished with 102 people on board have been found on the ocean floor, officials said on Thursday, after a painstaking 10-day search from jungles to stormy seas.

Parts including a tail stabilizer and flight attendant seats were confirmed or reported found in the sea and on beaches near the town of Pare Pare on the west coast of Sulawesi island. A top search official later said that a woman's body recovered in the vicinity was not that of a missing passenger.
Exhausted relatives expressed relief that they finally had firm news on the plane, even if the news was not good, after a long wait and an erroneous report that the airliner had crashed in the jungle and some people had survived.

The Adam Air Boeing 737-400 was heading from Surabaya in Central Java to Manado in northern Sulawesi when it vanished in bad weather on New Year's Day. The plane made no distress call, although the pilot had reported concerns over the weather.

"This morning I announced that there has been a finding of a part of Adam Air. What was found was the right tail's stabilizer number 65C25746-76. This thing was found by a fisherman in Pare Pare," said Eddy Suyanto, who has been coordinating search efforts from an air base in the South Sulawesi capital, Makassar.

"This object has the same number as the Boeing catalog," he told reporters, displaying the slightly scratched white stabilizer of about 1 meter (3 ft) in length found on Wednesday.

Two flight attendant seats were also found on a beach on Thursday in the same general area, search and rescue official Immal Yuhani told Reuters.
A stream of other apparent wreckage had also been found and was being examined, said Genot Hardianto, the chief of police at Pare Pare, about 100 km (60 miles) north of Makassar.

"So far there have been eight fragments made of fiber and aluminum in sizes ranging from 25 to 50 cm long, a life vest, an ID card, a flare and a headrest," he said.


Metro Television showed footage of a series of local people holding what appeared to be plane fragments. One elderly woman showed a small square piece of mangled, white wreckage.

Elshinta radio said fishermen had discovered a life vest wrapper 10 km from the stabilizer's location.

Earlier, a police official told Reuters the body of a woman, estimated to be in her 30s, had been recovered, but Suyanto had ruled out her as one of the passengers. He did not elaborate.

the rest here from the Washington Post