Jan 26, 2007, 9:40 GMT
Jakarta - A dispute erupted Friday between the Indonesian government and budget carrier Adam Air over who should pay for the retrieval of the 'black box' from a commercial jetliner that crashed into the ocean on New Year's Day, killing all 102 people on board.
A US naval oceanographic ship located the black box along with a large debris field from the wreckage of the plane, which disappeared off radar screens near the eastern island of Sulawesi and either crashed into the Makassar Strait or exploded in mid-air.
The wreckage is hundreds of metres beneath the ocean's surface and it will likely take a remote-controlled underwater robot to retrieve the black box, which contains voice recordings of the Adam Air flight's pilots and could provide clues as to why it went down.
'Indonesia's Search and Rescue Agency doesn't have that kind of budget, so the responsibility now goes to Adam Air,' Indonesian Vice President Jusuf Kalla was quoted as saying by the state-run Antara news agency.
Kalla also questioned the need to even retrieve the black box given that no one survived the crash.
However, Pring Saputra, managing-director of Adam Air, said the black box needed to be recovered and the government should pay for the operation, though it was unclear who would carry it out.
'It is the responsibility of the Indonesian government because it's now a national problem,' Saputra told Deutsche Presse-Agentur dpa. 'Also, because a US ship is involved, it's an international problem.'
The USNS Mary Sears located the black box on Thursday but was scheduled to depart from Indonesian waters on Friday, according to a statement from the US embassy in Jakarta.
According to Kalla, retrieving the black box and wreckage from the plane's fuselage is possible, but not easy.
'It took almost a month just to locate it,' Kalla said.
Adam Air Flight KI-574 was carrying 96 passengers - including three US citizens - and a crew of six when it disappeared during a scheduled flight from Surabaya, the capital of East Java province, to Manado, the capital of North Sulawesi province, on January 1.
Rescue teams searched in vain for 10 days before debris began floating ashore in South Sulawesi province. No survivors or bodies have been found, although officials say fragments of human hair were recovered from one of the jetliner's headrests.
Adam Air has agreed to pay 55,000 dollars in compensation to the families of each passenger.
Adam Air is one of dozens of budget carriers to spring up in Indonesia following the deregulation of the domestic aviation industry in 1999. A series of crashes and accidents involving those carriers has raised concerns about safety and maintenance practices.
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