Search for black box at Indonesian crash site delayed
     BUAH NADAR, Indonesia -- Sept. 28, 1997 08:21 a.m. EDT -- Heavy
 rains Sunday forced a delay in the search for the flight recorder
 of an Indonesian Airbus that crashed in north Sumatra, killing all
 234 aboard, after reporting haze in the area.
     Officials from Garuda Indonesia, the country's flagship airline,
 said the search for the flight data recorder and the cockpit voice
 recorder, the so-called black boxes, of the Airbus A300-B4 which
 crashed on Friday would be resumed at dawn.
     The recorders will be crucial in determining the cause of the
 crash, and whether the haze from forest fires on Sumatra played a
 part.
     An air force official earlier said the remains of the 222 pas-
 sengers and 12 crew had been removed from the wreckage, which is
 strewn across a deep ravine crossing a hillside banana and palm
 plantation 30 miles south of the city of Medan.
     The Garuda plane had been on a flight from Jakarta to Medan when
 it went down minutes after the pilot reported low visibility because
 of a smoky haze.
     Garuda officials said 74 of the bodies had been identified and
 55 of them had been flown to Jakarta. All unidentified bodies would
 be given a mass burial on Monday, alongside another mass grave con-
 taining 62 people who died in a plane crash in 1979, they said.
     Rescue workers battled through slush and tangled undergrowth to
 bring the bodies out of the ravine and to the road leading to Medan.
     They were then placed in coffins and taken to a community hall
 adjacent to the airport. Wreaths were laid along a low stage at one
 end of the hall.
     Bush fires mainly in Sumatra and Kalimantan on the Indonesian
 portion of Borneo Island have sent a choking, health-threatening
 smog over neighboring Singapore, Malaysia and Brunei and as far as
 Thailand and the Philippines in what experts have called a major
 environmental disaster.
     The smog will be one of the factors examined in an inquiry into
 the crash, but other Garuda pilots expressed scepticism that the
 haze would have been a prime cause.
     The veteran pilot of the Airbus told the Medan control tower he
 was flying through smoky haze on his approach to the city's Polonia
 international airport, Antara had reported.
     "We are still searching for the black box and because of that,
 we cannot make any assumption as to the cause of the crash yet,"
 said an official with the Aircraft Accident Commission.
     "Haze is an ordinary thing for pilots," said Shadrach Nababan,
 the head of the Garuda Indonesia Communications Forum for Pilots.
 "There are instruments in the plane and on the ground which can be
 used."
     Another pilot said the plane had left its flight path and was
 flying too low.
     Transport Minister Haryanto Dhanitirto was quoted by Antara as
 saying: "Whether the plane flew low because of the pilot, or because
 of instructions from air traffic control, or because of engine
 trouble -- all are still being investigated. That will be looked
 at by the independent investigation team."
     Medan airport was closed from after the crash until Sunday morn-
 ing because of the haze. A special flight carrying relatives of the
 victims arrived at the city in the morning, after repeated postpone-
 ments since early on Saturday.
     Many of them identified the charred and decomposed bodies of
 their loved ones from pieces of clothing.
     The Italian embassy in Jakarta said the victims included a
 couple from Bologna on their honeymoon. The British embassy said
 two Britons were aboard.
     Antara reported six Japanese, four Germans, two Americans, a
 Belgian and possibly six Taiwanese also on the plane.
     The news agency quoted a member of the forensic team at Adam
 Malik hospital as saying there were two "strange" corpses, and
 suggested they might have been stowaways or people killed on the
 ground.
     It was not clear if this would raise the overall toll.
--- DB 1.39/004487
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