Transport Minister Budi Karya Sumadi said flight SJ182 was delayed an hour before taking off at 14:36. The Boeing 737-500 disappeared from radar four minutes later after the pilot contacted air traffic control to climb to an altitude of 29,000 feet (8,839 meters), he said.
The airline said in a statement that the plane was on an estimated 90-minute flight from Jakarta to Pontianak, the capital of West Kalimantan province on the Indonesian island of Borneo. The plane was carrying 50 passengers and 12 crew members, all Indonesian nationals, including six additional crews for another trip.
Sumadi said a dozen ships, including four warships, were deployed in a search and rescue operation centered between Lancang Island and Laki Island, part of the Thousand Islands just north of Jakarta.
Bambang Suryo Aji, deputy head of operations and training for the National Search and Rescue Agency, said rescuers collected plane debris and clothes found by fishermen. They handed over the articles to the National Transportation Safety Committee for further investigation to determine if they came from the missing plane.
A commander of one of the search and rescue ships with a single name, Eko, said fishermen found cables and pieces of metal in the water.
“Fishermen told us they found them shortly after they heard an explosion like thunder,” Eko was quoted as saying by TVOne, adding that aviation fuel was found at the place where the fishermen found the wreckage.
Aji said no radio beacon signal was detected from the 26-year-old plane. He said his agency is investigating why the plane’s emergency locator transmitter or ELT is not transmitting a signal that could confirm if it crashed.
“The satellite system owned by neighboring Australia also did not pick up the ELT signal from the missing plane,” Aji said.
The tracking service Flightradar24 stated on its Twitter feed that the SJ182 flight lost more than 3,048 meters altitude in less than a minute, about four minutes after takeoff.
Television footage showed relatives and friends of the people on board crying, praying and hugging each other while waiting at Jakarta and Pontianak airports.
Chicago-based Boeing said in a statement: “We are aware of reports in Jakarta regarding Sriwijaya Air’s SJ-182 flight. Our thoughts are with the crew, the passengers and their families. We are in contact with the client of our airline and we are ready to support them in this difficult time “.
The single-aisle twin-engine Boeing 737 is one of the world’s most popular short- and medium-haul aircraft. The 737-500 is a shorter version of the widely used 737. Airlines began using this type of aircraft in the 1990s, production ended two decades ago.
Sriwijaya began operations in 2003 and flies to more than 50 destinations in Indonesia and a handful of nearby countries, according to its website. Its fleet includes a variety of 737 variants, as well as the regional turboprop ATR 72.
The airline has so far had a solid safety record, with no casualties on board in four incidents recorded in the Aviation Safety Network database, although one farmer was killed when a Boeing 737-200 left the runway in 2008 following a hydraulic problem.
Indonesia, the largest archipelago nation in the world with over 260 million people, has been hit by land, sea and air transport accidents due to overcrowding on ferries, aging infrastructure and poorly imposed safety standards.
In October 2018, a Boeing 737 MAX 8 aircraft operated by Lion Air sank in the Java Sea just minutes after taking off from Jakarta, killing all 189 people on board. The plane involved in Saturday’s incident did not have the automatic flight control system that played a role in the Lion Air crash and another crash of a 737 MAX 8 plane in Ethiopia five months later, which led to the grounding of the MAX 8 for 20 months.
The Lion Air crash was Indonesia’s worst disaster since 1997, when 234 people were killed on a Garuda flight near Medan on the island of Sumatra. In December 2014, an AirAsia flight from the Indonesian city of Surabaya to Singapore plunged into the sea, killing 162 people.
Indonesian airlines have previously been banned from flying to the United States and the European Union because they do not meet international safety standards. Both have since lifted the ban, calling for improved aviation safety and greater compliance with international standards.
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