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Divers recovered body parts, remains and clothing from the waters off the Indonesian capital Jakarta when the army located a sign that they hoped would lead to the wreckage of a plane that crashed with 62 people on board.
The Sriwijaya Air Boeing 737-500 sank in a steep fall about four minutes after leaving Soekarno-Hatta International Airport in Jakarta yesterday afternoon.
A military vessel “found the (Sriwijaya Air) SJ182 signal” and divers recovered parts of the plane about 23 meters (75 feet) below the water’s surface, the Transport Ministry said on Sunday, citing the military chief of Indonesia, Hadi Tjahjanto.
The ministry did not specify whether the signal came from the black box of the downed plane.
The frantic search seemed to offer no hope of finding survivors.
“Various body parts have been found and taken to the police hospital for identification,” Jakarta police spokesman Yusri Yunus told AFP.
“We still do not know if they belong to a single person. They also found belongings that we believe are the passengers.”
Pink pants from a child, a torn tire and wheel, life jackets and suspected remains of the plane were also found, according to authorities and AFP reporters at the scene.
Flight SJ182 was destined for the town of Pontianak in the Indonesian section of the island of Borneo, about 90 minutes of flight time over the Java Sea.
Last night, anguished relatives waited nervous news at the Pontianak airport.
The discovery of body parts and remains came as a flotilla of warships, helicopters and divers deployed off the coast of the sprawling capital on Sunday.
Sixty-two passengers and crew were on board the plane, all of them Indonesians, including 10 children, authorities said.
The plane crashed near popular tourist islands off the coast, authorities said.
More than 300 search and rescue personnel, navy and police participated in the search.
The search and rescue agency previously said poor conditions hampered the effort, but the military later said visibility had improved and the recovery operation would continue today.
Data from FlightRadar24 indicated that the plane reached an altitude of almost 11,000 feet before suddenly dropping to 250 feet. Then he lost contact with air traffic control.
The transport minister said yesterday 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 only said it was investigating the loss of contact.
He had no immediate comment when contacted by AFP again on Sunday.
In October 2018, 189 people were killed when a Lion Air Boeing 737 MAX plane crashed into the Java Sea about 12 minutes after takeoff from Jakarta on a routine one-hour flight.
That accident, and another in Ethiopia, saw Boeing with $ 2.5 billion in fines for accusations of defrauding regulators overseeing the 737 MAX model, which was grounded around the world after the two fatal accidents.
The jet that fell yesterday is not a MAX model and was 26 years old, according to authorities.
“We are aware of Jakarta media reports on Sriwijaya Air flight SJ-182. Our thoughts are with the crew, passengers and their families,” Boeing said in a statement.
“We are in contact with our airline’s customer and we are ready to support them during this difficult time.”
Indonesia’s aviation sector has long had a reputation for being poor in safety, and its airlines were once banned from entering US and European airspace.
In 2014, an AirAsia plane en route from Surabaya to Singapore crashed with the loss of 162 lives.
The final report from national investigators on that crash said the main factors included a chronic faulty component in a rudder control system, poor maintenance and inadequate response from pilots.
A year later, in 2015, 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.
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