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- The speed at which Sriwijaya Air flight SJY182 fell into the sea implies a catastrophic event or something deliberate, says an expert.
- Authorities have yet to say why the airline’s Boeing 737-500 plummeted.
- The plane crashed into the Java Sea minutes after takeoff.
Body parts, twisted remains and clothing were ripped from the waters off the Indonesian capital on Sunday after a passenger plane with 62 people on board crashed shortly after takeoff a day earlier.
“The final moments of the aircraft are … very worrying since the speed at which it was flying at that altitude was much lower than expected,” said Stephen Wright, professor of aircraft systems at the University of Tampere in Finland.
“The final seconds saw the aircraft rapidly descend from 10,000 feet (3,048 meters) towards the sea in a matter of 20 seconds, implying a catastrophic event or something deliberate.”
But he added that the accident “can only be fully explained once the black boxes and debris can be properly analyzed.”
Data from FlightRadar24 indicated that the plane reached an altitude of nearly 11,000 feet (3,350 meters) before suddenly dropping to 250 feet. Then he lost contact with air traffic control.
Steep dive
Anguished relatives waited nervously for news at the Pontianak airport. Passengers Ihsan Adhlan Hakim and his new girlfriend Putri were heading to Pontianak, the city in the Indonesian section of the island of Borneo that had been the destination of flight SJ182, at about 90 minutes away.
“He called to tell me that the flight was delayed due to bad weather,” Hakim’s brother Arwin said from Pontianak, where a wedding had been planned for the newlyweds.
“That was the last time I had contact with him.” Drink Sofian, 59, and her husband Dan Razanah, 58, were also on the doomed flight.
“They took a selfie and sent it to their children before leaving,” the couple’s nephew, Hendra, told AFP.
“I have four family members on the flight: my wife and three children,” Yaman Zai said sobbing.
“(My wife) sent me a picture of the baby … How could she not break my heart into pieces?”
The search and rescue agency said it had collected body bags filled with human remains, as well as debris from the remains, in waters about 23 meters deep.
Family members’ DNA will be compared to discovered remains for identification.
All 62 passengers and crew aboard the half-full flight were Indonesians. The count included 10 children.
Authorities have yet to say why the Sriwijaya Air Boeing 737-500 plummeted about four minutes after leaving Soekarno-Hatta International Airport on Saturday afternoon.
But, on Sunday, they said they had identified the location of their black boxes (cockpit voice and flight data recorders) that could be key in explaining why the plane crashed into the Java Sea off the coast of the sprawling city.
The transport minister said on Saturday that the plane appeared to deviate from its intended course just before disappearing from radar.
Sriwijaya Air, which operates flights to destinations in Indonesia and Southeast Asia, has said little so far about the 26-year-old plane, previously piloted by Continental Airlines and United States-based United Airlines.
The Indonesian airline has not registered a fatal accident since it began operating in 2003, but this accident is the latest in a series of disasters for the country’s aviation sector.
The Southeast Asian nation’s aviation sector has long been clouded by safety concerns, and its airlines were once barred from entering US and European airspace.
Security concerns
In October 2018, 189 people were killed when a Lion Air Boeing 737 MAX plane crashed near Jakarta.
That accident, and another in Ethiopia, saw Boeing receive fines of $ 2.5 billion for accusations of defrauding regulators overseeing the 737 MAX model, which was grounded around the world after the accidents.
The 737 that fell on Saturday was not a MAX variant.
“Our thoughts are with the crew, the passengers and their families,” Boeing said in a statement.
In 2014, an AirAsia plane en route from Surabaya to Singapore crashed with the loss of 162 lives.
A final report said the main factors included a chronically faulty component in a rudder control system, poor maintenance and inadequate response from pilots.
A year later, more than 140 people, including dozens on the ground, were killed when a military plane crashed shortly after takeoff in Medan, on the island of Sumatra.
