the Boeing The 737-500, en route to Pontianak in West Kalimantan, disappeared from radar screens after taking off shortly after 2.30 pm (07.30 GMT).
Indonesian Transport Minister Budi Karya told a press conference that there were 62 people on board, including 12 crew members. Another official had previously said there were 56 passengers and six crew members.
Bagus Puruhito, head of the country’s search and rescue agency, Basarnas, said teams had been sent to search the waters north of Jakarta. No beacon signal had been detected, the agency said.
A member of the rescue team searching for an Indonesian plane that lost contact after taking off from the capital Jakarta has suspicious wreckage at sea. (Reuters)
Agus Haryono, another agency official, told Reuters debris suspected of being the plane had been found in the sea, but that it had not been confirmed that it came from the missed flight.
The trusted Flightradar24 tracking service said on its Twitter account that flight SJ182 “lost more than 10,000 feet of altitude in less than a minute, approximately 4 minutes after leaving Jakarta.”
Sriwijaya Air flight # SJ182 lost more than 10,000 feet of altitude in less than a minute, approximately 4 minutes after… https://t.co/QC1Ps4y1gP
– Flightradar24 (@ flightradar24) 1610187475000
Sriwijaya Air, an Indonesian airline, said in a statement that it was gathering more detailed information about the flight before it could make a more complete statement.
The nearly 27-year-old Boeing 737-500 was much older than Boeing’s problem-plagued 737 MAX, one of which crashed in Jakarta in late 2018, killing all 189 people aboard the Lion Air flight. Older 737s are widely flown and do not have the system implicated in the MAX safety crisis.
People are seen at a temporary crisis center set up at the domestic terminal at Soekarno-Hatta International Airport, after Sriwijaya Air flight SJ182 lost contact after taking off, in Tangerang, near Jakarta. (Reuters)
A Boeing spokeswoman said: “We are aware of the Jakarta media reports and are closely monitoring the situation. We are working to gather more information.”
Indonesian television channels showed images of suspected remains.
“We found some cables, a piece of jeans and pieces of metal in the water,” Zulkifli, a security official, told CNNIndonesia.com.
Nurhasan, a fisherman from 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, about 740 km (460 miles) away.
Video footage from the airport showed photographs of the passengers’ relatives crying as they awaited news of what happened.
Search operation
Rescue official Agus said 50 people were participating in the search and that they would search overnight.
Founded in 2003, the Jakarta-based Sriwijaya Air group primarily flies within Indonesia.
The airline has a strong safety record so far, with no casualties on board in four incidents recorded in the Aviation Safety Network database, although a farmer was killed when a Boeing 737-200 left the runway in 2008 due to a hydraulic problem.
The Boeing 737 is the best-selling family of aircraft in the world and has undergone several makeovers since it entered service in 1968.
The 737-500 is two generations of development before the more recent 737 MAX, which has been embroiled in a global safety crisis following the accidents in Indonesia and Ethiopia. It does not use the software system involved in those locks.
Nonetheless, experts say planes like the 737-500 leased by Sriwijaya are being phased out for newer fuel-saving models. Civil aircraft typically have an economic life of 25 years, which means that they become too expensive to keep flying beyond that compared to younger models, but they are designed to last longer.
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