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Sriwijaya Air Flight 182, a Boeing 737-500, was heading from Jakarta to the city of Pontianak, on the Indonesian island of Borneo, when it lost contact at 2:40 p.m. local time (2:40 a.m. ET), 11 nautical miles north of Jakarta’s Soekarno – Hatta International Airport. Within four minutes into the flight, and amid heavy rain, the plane fell 10,000 feet in less than a minute before disappearing from radar, according to global flight tracking service Flightradar24.
Indonesia’s National Search and Rescue Agency (Basarnas) said it had found several debris believed to be from the lost plane, but bad weather and poor visibility hampered the search overnight.
“Currently, our personnel are already in the field and have found various parts of the plane, and the obstacle we face today is poor visibility,” said Deputy for Operations and Preparation Bambang Suryo Aji during a virtual press conference, according to the agency. of Indonesian news. Antara.
The focus of the search is between the islands of Laki and Lancang, known as the Thousand Islands chain, about 20 miles northwest of Jakarta. Some 28 ships, five helicopters and two aircraft are being deployed in a joint effort between the Indonesian Navy, Police, Coast Guard and Ministry of Transport. Navy officer Abdul Rasyid said that the Indonesian Navy has sent 10 ships into the surrounding waters off Laki Island and that the Chief of the Armed Forces will visit the search area on Sunday morning.
The commander of the Indonesian National Armed Forces, Chief Air Marshal Hadi Tjahjanto, said on Sunday that search teams have identified and verified the location of the crash site, at a press conference at the crisis command center.
Hadi said the coordinates were determined by radar tracking and the last contact with the plane before it crashed into the sea. Navy divers have been deployed to search for the remains.
In addition, teams from the National Committee for Transport Safety (KNKT) have started an investigation into the cause of the accident.
“We sent two investigators from the Indonesian Search and Rescue Agency out to sea to conduct a location study. We need to find more information about the location, for example to determine what equipment we are going to use in relation to the underwater terrain we have,” Suryanto Cahyono told CNN.
Investigators have also been dispatched to Air Traffic Control at the airport, the Agency for Meteorology, Climatology and Geophysics, and Sriwijaya Airlines to gather information.
Meanwhile, Jakarta police have set up a command post at the Kramat Jati Police Hospital to identify the accident victims and search for their relatives, Indonesian news agency Antara reported on Sunday.
Witnesses describe an explosion
Three Lancang Island fishermen told CNN they heard an explosion and experienced a sudden large wave around the time the plane disappeared.
“I heard a very loud explosion. I thought it was a bomb or a big thunderbolt. Then we saw the big wave, about 2 meters high, hitting our boat,” Hendrik Mulyadi said.
Hendrik’s colleague Solihin described the sound as “a bomb in water.” They said it was dark and raining at the time.
The men said they did not see a plane crash into the sea, but they smelled fuel and detected debris. The men said they returned to shore to report what they experienced to police.
The missing plane was carrying 50 passengers, 43 adults and 7 children, as well as 12 crew members, Indonesian Transport Minister Budi Karya Sumadi said.
The plane, registered PK CLC, was a 26-year-old Boeing 737-500, according to Flightradar24. Sriwijaya Airlines CEO Jefferson Irwin Jauwena said the plane was in good condition before taking off.
In a statement, Boeing said: “Our thoughts are with the crew, passengers and their families. We are in contact with our airline’s customer and we are ready to support them during this difficult time.”
Sriwijaya Air, a low-cost carrier and Indonesia’s third-largest airline, carries more than 950,000 passengers per month from its central Jakarta to 53 destinations within Indonesia and three regional countries, according to the company’s website.
In June 2018, it was removed from the European Union’s list of banned airlines, 11 years after its inclusion on that list.
A troubling record
This weekend’s accident is the latest to shake Indonesia’s burgeoning airline industry.
In 2014, Indonesia’s AirAsia Flight 8501 claimed the lives of 162 people on board after crashing into the Java Sea while flying from Surabaya to Singapore.
And in the year before that, Lion Air was involved in two accidents. A Boeing 737 lost the runway on landing and crashed into the sea near Bali, forcing passengers to swim or wade to safety, while another Boeing 737 collided with a cow while landing at Jalaluddin Airport in Gorontalo. on the island of Sulawesi.
In 2007, the European Union banned all 51 Indonesian airlines from its airspace after a Garuda Indonesia plane with 140 people on board left the Yogyakarta runway in March and burst into flames, killing 21 people in board.
Indonesia, an archipelago nation of more than 13,000 islands, has seen a boom in domestic aviation in recent years, with passenger traffic tripling between 2005 and 2017, according to Australian consultancy CAPA-Center for Aviation.
The country of 270 million people relies heavily on air travel to travel between the islands of the archipelago, which stretches for more than 3,000 miles – roughly the same distance between London and New York.
Jamaluddin Masrur reported from Jakarta. CNN’s Lynn Franco, Kara Fox and Angela Dewan contributed to this report.
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