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Indonesian authorities confirmed that the commercial airplane with 56 passengers, including 10 children, and 6 crew members fell into the sea off the coast of Jakarta. Fishermen found remains of the ship.
Bambang Suryohadi, from the search and rescue agency (Basarna) reported at a press conference that the Sriwajaya airline plane, a Boeing 737-524 crashed in the Java Sea a few minutes after taking off from Sukarno-Hatta International Airport , in the Indonesian capital. The aircraft was destined for West Borneo, specifically the city of Pontianak.
Indonesian Transport Minister Budi Karya Sumadi explained at a press conference that contact was lost with the device 13 minutes after taking off. The plane was carrying 60 passengers, including 10 children, and 6 crew members, according to the Ministry of Transport. This type of apparatus has capacity for about 130 people.
This domestic flight usually takes about 90 minutes.
What happened?
The first data indicates that the plane abruptly changed direction, which puzzled the workers in the control tower, who tried to contact the crew, but received no response.
Moments later, the plane disappeared from radar.
“I have four members of my family on the plane: my wife and my three children,” Yaman Zai, who was waiting for them at the Pontianak airport, declared crying.
“My wife sent me a photo of the baby today … How can I not have my heart broken?”
See more: Indonesia reports missing plane
According to data from the website FlightRadar24, the device reached a height of 11,000 feet (3,350 meters) before falling to 250 feet. Then contact with the control tower was lost.
“The Sriwijaya Air SJ182 flight lost more than 10,000 feet (around 3,000 meters) in less than four minutes after taking off from Jakarta,” said the aeronautical site on its official Twitter account.
The findings
Debris from the plane has already been found and investigations are expected to find the exact point of the crash. A team prepares to go directly to the area.
Fishermen claimed that they had seen the explosion of the plane and found possible remains of the device floating.
The airline explanation
The authorities and the low-cost airline did not provide explanations for this sudden drop. The transport minister, however, stated that the plane appeared to be deviating from its intended trajectory just before disappearing.
Sriwijawa Air, which has about 19 Boeing for its domestic connections and with other destinations in Southeast Asia, limited itself to indicating that it was investigating what happened.
