Transport Minister Budi Karya Sumadi said flight SJ182 was delayed by an hour before taking off at 2:36 PM. The Boeing 737-500 disappeared from the radar four minutes later, after the pilot contacted air traffic control to take off 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 West Kalimantan province on the Indonesian island of Borneo. The aircraft was carrying 50 passengers and 12 crew, 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 just north of Jakarta.
Bambang Suryo Aji, the National Search and Rescue Agency’s deputy chief for operations and preparedness, said rescuers were collecting aircraft waste and clothing found by fishermen. They handed 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 search and rescue ships, with only one name, Eko, said fishermen found cables and pieces of metal in the water.
“The fishermen told us they found them shortly after they heard an explosion like the sound of thunder,” Eko said by TVOne, adding that jet fuel was found at the location where the fishermen found the debris.
Aji said no beacon had been detected from the 26-year-old plane. He said his agency was investigating why the plane’s emergency transmitter, or ELT, was not sending a signal that could confirm if it had crashed.
“The satellite system of neighboring Australia also did not pick up the ELT signal from the missing plane,” Aji said.
Tracking service Flightradar24 said on its Twitter feed that flight SJ182 lost more than 10,000 feet (3,048 meters) of altitude in less than a minute, about four minutes after takeoff.
Television footage showed relatives and friends of people aboard the plane crying, bathing, and hugging each other while waiting at airports in Jakarta and Pontianak.
Chicago-based Boeing said in a statement: “We are aware of media reports from Jakarta about Sriwijaya Air flight SJ-182. Our thoughts are with the crew, passengers and their families. We are in contact with our airline customer. and are ready to support them in this difficult time. “
The single-aisle twin-engine 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 model 737. Airlines started 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 ATR 72 twin-engine turboprop aircraft.
The airline has had a solid safety record so far, with no casualties on board in four incidents recorded in the Aviation Safety Network database, although one farmer was killed when a Boeing 737-200 left the runway in 2008 after a hydraulic problem.
Indonesia, the world’s largest archipelago nation, with more than 260 million people, is plagued by land, sea and air transport accidents due to overcrowding on ferries, outdated infrastructure and poorly maintained safety standards.
In October 2018, a Lion Air Boeing 737 MAX 8 jet plunged into the Java Sea minutes after takeoff from Jakarta, killing all 189 people on board. The aircraft involved in Saturday’s incident did not have the automated flight control system involved in the Lion Air crash and another crash of a 737 MAX 8 jet in Ethiopia five months later, which led to the grounding of the aircraft. MAX 8 for 20 months. .
The Lion Air crash was the biggest aviation disaster in Indonesia since 1997, when 234 people died on a Garuda Airlines flight near Medan on the island of Sumatra. In December 2014, an AirAsia flight from the Indonesian city of Surabaya to Singapore crashed into the sea, killing 162 people.
Indonesian airlines had previously been banned from flying to the United States and the European Union because they failed to comply with international safety standards. Both have since lifted the ban, citing improvements in aviation safety and better compliance with international standards.
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