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JAKARTA: An investigator from the Indonesian National Transportation Safety Committee (KNKT) said the Sriwijaya Air plane that crashed into the Java Sea with 62 people on board over the weekend possibly broke when it hit the waters due to the debris found so far.
“We don’t know for sure, but if we look at the rubble, it is scattered over an area that is not too wide,” Nurcahyo Utomo told Reuters on Monday.
“Possibly it broke when it hit the waters because if it had exploded in midair, the debris would be distributed more widely,” he added.
The Boeing 737-500 was heading on a domestic flight to Pontianak in West Kalimantan on Saturday before disappearing from radar screens four minutes after takeoff. There are no clues yet as to what caused the accident.
READ: Black box location for downed Indonesian Sriwijaya Air plane found
KNKT chief Soerjanto Tjahjono said Sunday that the locations of the two black boxes from flight SJ182 had been identified.
“Hopefully we can get them back soon,” said Warlord Hadi Tjahjanto, without giving an estimate.
Rescuers brought the wreckage to the port of Jakarta, including the plane’s altimeter radar, emergency ramp and a piece that is suspected to have detached from the underside of the plane’s tail, said Nurcahyo Utomo, a KNKT official.
A twisted piece of metal was painted in Sriwijaya Air’s blue and red colors. Authorities said they came from a depth of 23 meters near a group of islands off the coast of Jakarta.
Indonesian authorities said they had also recovered body parts and clothing.
Police asked the families to provide information such as dental records and DNA samples to help identify the bodies.
The plane had 12 crew members and 50 passengers on board, all Indonesians and including 10 children.
READ: ‘Waiting for a miracle’: Anxious wait for friends and family after Sriwijaya Air plane disappeared in Indonesia
Tracking service Flightradar24 said the aircraft took off at 2.36 pm local time (3.36 pm Singapore time) and ascended to reach 10,900 feet in four minutes. Then it started a steep decline and stopped transmitting data 21 seconds later.
There were no immediate clues as to what caused the sudden decline. Most plane crashes are caused by a combination of factors that can take months to settle down, safety experts say.
A spokeswoman for the Transport Ministry said air traffic control had asked the pilot why the plane was heading northwest instead of following its expected flight path seconds before disappearing.
The pilots had decades of experience between them with the flight captain who was reported to be a former air force pilot and his co-pilot at Sriwijaya Air since 2013, according to his Linkedin profile.
READ: More debris found as Indonesian authorities race against time to search for missing Sriwijaya Air plane
Sriwijaya Air’s plane was a nearly 27-year-old Boeing 737-500, much older than Boeing’s troubled 737 MAX. Older 737s are widely flown and do not have the stall prevention system implicated in the MAX safety crisis.
“We are in contact with our airline’s customer and we are ready to support them during this difficult time,” Boeing said in a statement. “Our thoughts are with the crew, the passengers and their families.”
Founded in 2003, the Jakarta-based Sriwijaya Air group primarily flies within the vast Indonesian archipelago. The budget airline has had a strong safety record, with no casualties on board in four incidents recorded in the Aviation Safety Network database.
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.
