Commercial plane with 62 people disappears in Indonesia

Yakarta, Indonesia – A Sriwijaya Air plane with 62 people on board lost contact with air traffic controllers after taking off from the Indonesian capital last Saturday on a domestic flight, authorities said.

Ministry of Transport spokesman Adita Irawati said the Boeing 737-500 plane took off from Jakarta at around 1:56 PM (local time) and lost contact with the control tower at 2:40 PM.

An airline statement indicates that the plane was on an approximately 90-minute flight from Jakarta to Pontianak, the capital of East Kalimantan province, on Borneo Island.

Before the plane took off, 56 passengers and six crew boarded the plane.

Irawati indicated that a search and rescue operation had already begun in conjunction with the National Search and Rescue Agency and the National Transportation Security Committee.

An aircraft on that aforementioned route would fly most of the flight over the Java Sea in the Indian Ocean.

At nightfall there was no trace of the plane.

Indonesia, the largest archipelago country in the world, with a population of 260 million people, has been hit by a scourge of land, sea and air transport accidents due to overcapacity of ships, deteriorating infrastructure and poorly applied safety standards.