Wreckage of the Adam Air Boeing 737-400 that disappeared on 1 January has finally been found in waters in the south of the Makassar Strait that separates Indonesia’s Sulawesi and Kalimantan islands.
National Transportation Safety Commission chief Setyo Rahardjo says that “this morning a local fisherman found part of the horizontal stabiliser… It was found near Parepare north of Makassar and it was found 300m (1,000ft) off the coast”.
Setyo says this is the same area where sonar equipment detected metal objects a few days ago at the bottom of the sea off the coast of Parepare, a city on the southwest coast of Sulawesi island. He says he now believes this is in fact wreckage from the Adam Air 737-400.
But the wreckage is about 1,500m below sea level so the search teams have not yet retrieved it and are unlikely to do so today because special equipment is needed, he says.
Setyo also confirms that an analysis of raw data from radar has pinpointed that the aircraft was last detected flying off the south coast of Sulawesi island.
One hundred and two people were on board the Adam Air 737-400 which went missing on 1 January when it was travelling from Surabaya to Manado, in northern Sulawesi.
Source: FlightGlobal.com
