The blind led by the partially sighted.

Telling someone on the ground about your situation takes a back seat to flying the aircraft. The workload of the crew must have been overwhelming so it’s hardly surprising that a Mayday call was missed.

As stated above, radar has changed everything in the last few decades, previously a position report and description of the problem would make a critical difference in search and rescue knowing where to look. In this case the controller could see the aircraft going down and could give SAR a good starting point.

And now it seems the CVR is damaged, and there might be no information on it... very convenient...

From NY Times.

Very convenient in what way? And for whom?

Indonesia the land of..
 

Is the Indonesian transportation minister part of this airline shareholders ?

grizzled

Err because it’s Indonesia?

Pilot recency lapses could be a agenda they try to push here. They will probably say it’s a global problem and could happen anywhere. The media will go along with this.

Recency issues and a general poor training system, combined, well I don’t think this one is going to be a one off event as such.

grizzled

If you are expecting an open and transparent investigation you obviously haven’t operated there.
I’ve operated in and out of Jakarta and Bali many many times over the last 30 years.
Some of the stuff I’ve seen just leaves you shaking your head.
My recommendation ?
Dont fly domestically in Indonesia on a LCC.

Sadly, that is often the only choice - the trains are pretty good, but that won't get you between islands and the boats/ferries are just as bad as the LCC. And don't get me started on the drivers there...
In reality, as bad as the airline safety record is, it's still probably the safest way to travel if you can't go by train.

Preparing the FDR for readout.

Just visible is the AlliedSignal (rather than Honeywell) logo, indicating that the FDR is an early example of that particular model, probably the original fitted in 1996.

Blacksheep

I guess what you have been listening to was the last 2-3 minutes of the Adam Air CVR from 2007: As mentioned by the others, the CVR of the Sriwijaya Flight has not been recovered yet.

One suspects that the CVR referred to is more than probably the (fake) one that was reportedly from the crash of Adam Air 574

I would add that the level of outrageous speculation & assertion, often coupled with a clear lack of B737's systems knowledge and / or of history, that has been exhibited by some within this thread is all of appalling & disgraceful and one can only hope that such people are not professional pilots.

Well, you have an electronic device that has just fallen out of the sky.
So I guess it makes some sense, to remove the form fitted protective wrapping and assess the condition visually (most likely also under a microscope) to see if it does indeed make sense to plug it in or if you risk doing more harm than good. Alternatives being trying to repair obvious defects or unsoldering the memory modules and reading them out either directly or refitting them to a development board for the unit (which would most likely have to be done by the OEM).

Edit: You can see that he's wearing an anti-static wristband at 2:04 and later when bathing the board.

I have followed it up. It seems to be the alleged ATC communications recording of the Lion Air accident that was 'leaked' to the Indonesian media and widely circulated at the time - although Lion Air said it was not genuine. It is now being circulated in SE Asia media as a recording of the Sriwijaya accident. As you say, a very sick example of fake news.

Perhaps said, but not any more ?

Long time lurker, thought I'd post something as I know this stuff...

Flash memory chips have stored "static" charge in them in a pattern that sets what the data is. The charges only "leak" out if exposed to other strong electric charges, radiation or heat above about 160c. Data retention is actually very robust under most circumstances. They can also take silly levels of G because they are so lightweight.

The memory chips also have anti static diodes on each pin internally, significantly reducing their vulnerability to ESD, but people should still take care in case they have a "huge" amount if charge built up. Generally in most situations the ESD diodes can handle it no problem.

Moisture in plastic encapsulated chips is only a problem if they are heated suddenly (over a few seconds), where the moisture absorbed in the plastic can turn to steam, "popcorning" the chip case. Not a problem here as the temps are being kept lowish, just to dry them out.

Scraping off the conformal (or resin encapsulation) coating isn't a problem with a screwdriver, as the circuit boards used are generally of a very high quality, with thicker than usual "tracks". Even if the plastic case or pin is damaged, it is possible to erode away the plastic chip case to expose the silicon chip inside it. Then under a microscope, it is possible laser scan the flash memory to read out the data directly, depending in the reflected light polarisation per data bit.

In this way any flash memory can be read, from any device no matter how secure it is.

The youtube video of the people wearing winter gloves to handle the FDR was interesting, but nothing in there would have me concerned. I'd have done the exact same. No-one would ever plug in the FDR without carefully examining the circuit board very carefully first. You need to expose everything just like they did to check it. Only then after multiple expert examinations would i plug it into a reader- which also has many safeguards to avoid accidental damage to the data.

Hope this helps clear things up. Very curious to know what they find in this case. Unusual end of flight to say the least.

Old electronics guy

Any reference on that stunt, and the physics behind it?

"The youtube video of the people wearing winter gloves to handle the FDR was interesting,"

Those are anti-static gloves.

fgrieu

https://www.cl.cam.ac.uk/~rja14/Papers/SISW02.pdf