NEW DELHI, Jan 9: A Sriwijaya Air plane with 62 people on board on a domestic flight from the Indonesian capital city of Jakarta to Pontianak in West Kalimantan is feared to have crashed into the sea within minutes of taking off on Saturday.
Rescuers said suspected debris had been found in the sea off the city of the plane which lost contact after taking off from Jakarta. The Indonesian Navy has determined the coordinates and ships have been deployed to the location, Navy official Abdul Rasyid said. “The coordinates have been found and have been given to all Navy vessels in the area,” he told reporters. Rescue officials said 50 people were taking part in the search and that they would search into the night.
The Boeing 737-500 disappeared from radar screens after taking off just after 2.30 p.m. (0730 GMT). Indonesian Transport Minister Budi Karya told a news conference that 62 people had been aboard, including six crew.
Bagus Puruhito, head of the country’s search and rescue agency Basarnas, said teams had been dispatched to search the waters north of Jakarta. No radio beacon signal had been detected, the agency said. Agus Haryono, another official with the agency said debris suspected to be from the plane had been found in the sea, but it had not been confirmed that it came from the missing flight.
Reliable tracking service Flightradar24 said on its Twitter feed that Flight SJ182 “lost more than 10,000 feet of altitude in less than one minute, about 4 minutes after departure from Jakarta.”
Sriwijaya Air, an Indonesian airline, said in a statement it was gathering more detailed information regarding the flight before it could make a fuller statement. The nearly 27-year-old Boeing 737-500 was much older than Boeing’s problem-plagued 737 MAX model, one of which crashed off Jakarta in late 2018, killing all 189 people aboard the Lion Air flight.
Nurhasan, a fisherman in the area known as Thousand Islands, told local media that he and his crew had found several pieces of metal. It was raining at Soekarno-Hatta International Airport when the plane took off for Pontianak, around 740 km (460 miles) away.
Founded in 2003, Jakarta-based Sriwijaya Air group flies largely within Indonesia. The Boeing 737 is the world’s most-sold family of aircraft and has undergone several makeovers since it entered service in 1968. The 737-500 is two generations of development before the most recent 737 MAX.
(Manas Dasgupta)
