Indonesian plane carrying 62 disappears on domestic flight

A Sriwijaya Air plane carrying 62 people lost contact with air traffic controllers minutes after taking off from the Indonesian capital on a domestic flight on Saturday, and debris found by fishermen was being examined to see if it was from the plane. missing, authorities said.

Transport Minister Budi Karya Sumadi said flight SJ182 was delayed for an hour before taking off at 2.36 pm. The Boeing 737-500 disappeared from radar four minutes later, after the pilot contacted air traffic control to ascend to an altitude of 29,000 feet (8,839 meters), he said.

The airline said in a statement that the plane was on an estimated 90-minute flight from Jakarta to Pontianak, the capital of the West Kalimantan province on the Indonesian island of Borneo. The plane was carrying 50 passengers and 12 crew members, all Indonesian nationals, including six additional crew members for another trip.

Sumadi said a dozen ships, including four warships, were deployed in a search and rescue operation centered between Lancang Island and Laki Island, part of the Thousand Islands chain north of Jakarta.

Bambang Suryo Aji, deputy chief of operations and readiness for the National Search and Rescue Agency, said rescuers collected debris from planes and clothing found by fishermen. They turned the items over to the National Transportation Safety Committee for further investigation to determine if they were from the missing plane.

A commander of one of the single name search and rescue boats, Eko, said fishermen found cables and metal pieces in the water.

“The fishermen told us they found them shortly after hearing an explosion like the sound of thunder,” Eko said, quoted by TVOne, adding that aviation fuel was found at the site where the fishermen found the debris.

Aji said no beacon signal had been detected from the 26-year-old plane. He said his agency was investigating why the plane’s emergency locator transmitter, or ELT, was not transmitting a signal that could confirm whether it had crashed.

“The satellite system owned by neighboring Australia also did not pick up the ELT signal from the lost plane,” Aji said.

Solihin, 22, a fisherman from Lancang Island, said he and two other fishermen heard an explosion about 30 meters from them.

“The plane fell like lightning into the sea and exploded in the water,” he said.

“We thought it was a bomb or a tsunami, since after that we saw the big splash of the water after the explosion. It was raining a lot and the weather was so bad. So it’s hard to see clearly around. But we can see the splash. and a big wave after the sounds. We were very shocked and saw directly the debris from the plane and the fuel around our boat, “he said.

The Flightradar24 tracking service said on its Twitter account that flight SJ182 lost more than 3,048 m in altitude in less than a minute, about four minutes after takeoff.

Sriwijaya Air Chairman Jefferson Irwin Jauwena said the plane was fit to fly. He told reporters that the plane had previously flown to the city of Pontianak and Pangkal Pinang on the same day.

“The maintenance report said everything went well and in flying condition,” Jauwena told a news conference. He said the plane was delayed due to bad weather, not any damage.

It was raining at Jakarta’s Soekarno-Hatta International Airport when the plane took off for Pontianak, some 740 kilometers away.

Television footage showed family members and friends of people on board the plane crying, praying and hugging as they waited at the Jakarta and Pontianak airports.

Chicago-based Boeing said on its Twitter account that it was aware of the incident. He said he was closely monitoring the situation and “working to gather more information.”

The twin-engine, single-aisle Boeing 737 is one of the world’s most popular short- and medium-haul aircraft. The 737-500 is a shorter version of the widely used 737. Airlines began using this type of aircraft in the 1990s, and production ended two decades ago.

Sriwijaya started operations in 2003 and flies to more than 50 destinations in Indonesia and a handful of nearby countries, according to its website. Its fleet includes a variety of 737 variants, as well as the regional twin-engine turboprop ATR 72.

The airline has had 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 to a hydraulic problem.

Indonesia, the world’s largest archipelago nation with more than 260 million people, has been hit by transportation accidents on land, sea and air due to overcrowding on ferries, outdated infrastructure and poor safety regulations.

In October 2018, a Boeing 737 MAX 8 aircraft operated by Lion Air sank in the Java Sea just minutes after taking off from Jakarta, killing all 189 people on board. The aircraft involved in Saturday’s incident did not have the automated flight control system that played a role in the Lion Air crash and another 737 MAX 8 crash in Ethiopia five months later, leading to the grounding of the MAX 8 for 20 months. .

The Lion Air crash was Indonesia’s worst air disaster since 1997, when 234 people were killed on a Garuda airline flight near Medan on the island of Sumatra. In December 2014, an AirAsia flight from the Indonesian city of Surabaya to Singapore sank into the sea, killing 162 people.

Previously, Indonesian airlines were banned from flying to the United States and the European Union for failing to meet international safety standards. Both have since lifted the ban, citing improvements in aviation security and greater compliance with international standards.

– AP