[ad_1]
JAKARTA: Sriwijaya Air lost contact with a plane believed to have 62 people on board after it took off from the Indonesian capital Jakarta on Saturday (January 9).
The plane was heading to Pontianak in West Kalimantan province.
A spokesperson for the Indonesian Ministry of Transport said commercial flight SJY182 took off at around 2.45pm WIB and was scheduled to land in Pontianak at 4.15pm.
“The last contact of the control tower with the plane was at 3:40 p.m., before contact was lost,” the spokesperson said in an exchange on WhatsApp.
There were 56 passengers on board, including 10 children, said an official with the national search and rescue agency Basarnas. Local media said there were six crew members.
FlightRadar24 tweeted that the plane had lost more than 10,000 feet of altitude in less than a minute, just four minutes after leaving Jakarta.
The plane is a 27-year-old Boeing 737-500, according to registration details included in the tracking data.
Sriwijaya Air, which has about 19 Boeing jets flying to destinations in Indonesia and Southeast Asia, said in a statement that it was still gathering more detailed information about the flight before it could make any statements.
A Boeing spokeswoman said: “We are aware of the Jakarta media reports and are closely monitoring the situation. We are working to collect more information.”
SEARCH AND RESCUE OPERATION
Surachman, a local government official, told Kompas TV that fishermen found what appeared to be the wreckage of a plane in waters north of Jakarta and that a search was underway. Other channels showed images of suspected remains.
“We found some cables, a piece of jeans (sic) and pieces of metal in the water,” Zulkifli, a security officer, told CNNIndonesia.com.
Rescue agency official Agus Haryono told Reuters debris suspected of being the plane was found in the waters north of Jakarta, but did not confirm that it was from the flight.
Agus said that 50 people were participating in the search and that they would continue searching until evening.
Television footage showed family and friends of people on board the plane crying, praying and hugging as they waited at the Jakarta airport and Pontianak airport.
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.
This is a developing story. Please update for updates.
