JAKARTA: A Sriwijaya Air plane crashed into the sea on Saturday minutes after taking off from the Indonesian capital Jakarta on a domestic flight with 62 people on board, and its fate is unknown.
The Boeing 737-500, en route to Pontianak in West Kalimantan, disappeared from radar screens after taking off just after 2.30 pm (0730 GMT), 30 minutes after the scheduled time due to heavy rain.
Indonesian Transport Minister Budi Karya told a press conference that 62 people had been on board flight SJ 182, including 12 crew members. He was quoted by website detik.com as saying the plane crashed near Laki Island, about 20 kilometers (12 miles) from the airport.
The Basarnas rescue agency said in a statement that it would send a team to the Thousand Islands area to assist in the search for victims “after the Sriwijaya Air SJ 182 crash.”
All those on board were Indonesian, the Indonesian transport safety committee said.
The Indonesian Navy had pinpointed the site of the missing aircraft and ships had been dispatched there, a Navy official said. Authorities did not say whether they believed there were survivors.
The chief executive of Indonesian airline Sriwijaya Air, Jefferson Irwin Jauwena, told a press conference that the plane was in good condition before the flight.
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.
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.”
The trusted Flightradar24 tracking service said the Boeing plane took off at 2:36 pm local time (0736 GMT) and ascended to reach 10,900 feet in four minutes. Then it started a steep decline and stopped transmitting data 21 seconds later.
A spokeswoman for the Transport Ministry said air traffic control at Soekarno-Hatta International Airport had asked the pilot why the plane was heading northwest instead of following its expected flight path seconds before disappearing.
There were no immediate clues as to what could have caused the sudden decline and safety experts emphasize that most plane crashes are caused by a combination of factors that can take months to establish.
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.
Anguished relatives waited in Pontianak, about 740 km (460 miles) from Jakarta.
Yaman Zai, a father of three children who were on board the plane with their mother, said he was at the Pontianak airport waiting for them when he heard the news.
“I will never see her again,” she said, holding up a photo of her oldest daughter.
Indonesia’s KNKT security agency was expected to launch an immediate investigation. The US National Transportation Safety Board will automatically be part of the probe, as the aircraft was designed and built in the United States.
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.
The Boeing 737 is the best-selling family of aircraft in the world and has undergone several makeovers since entering 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.
However, experts say planes like the 737-500 leased by Sriwijaya are being phased out for the newer fuel-efficient 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.
Indonesia itself has a spotty aviation safety record.
In 2007, the European Union banned all Indonesian airlines following a series of accidents and reports of deterioration in supervision and maintenance since deregulation in the late 1990s. The restrictions were fully lifted in 2018.
Between 2007 and 2016, the US Federal Aviation Administration lowered its safety assessment of Indonesia to Category 2, meaning its regulatory system was inadequate.
Indonesian officials say they have worked hard to bring security up to international standards.
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