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 the radar four minutes later, after the pilot contacted air traffic control to rise 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 plane was carrying 50 passengers and 12 crew members, all Indonesian citizens, including six extra crew members for another trip.
Sumadi said a dozen vessels, including four warships, were deployed in a centralized search and rescue operation between Lancang and Laki Islands, part of the Thousand Islands chain in northern Jakarta.
Bambang Suryo Aji, the deputy chief of operations and preparedness for the National Search and Rescue Agency, said rescue workers had collected plane wreckage and clothing that had been found by fishermen. They handed the items over to the National Transport Safety Committee for further investigation to determine whether they were from the missing plane.
The 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 that they found them shortly after hearing an explosion like the sound of thunder,” said Eko, quoted by TVOne, adding that jet fuel was found at the spot where the fishermen found the wreckage.
Aji said that no radio signals were detected on 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 that it had crashed.
“The satellite system belonging to neighboring Australia also failed to pick up the ELT signal from the missing plane,” said Aji.
The tracking service Flightradar24 said in its Twitter feed that flight SJ182 lost more than 10,000 feet (3,048 meters) in altitude in less than a minute, about four minutes after takeoff.
Television footage showed relatives and friends of people aboard the plane crying, praying and hugging while waiting at Jakarta and Pontianak airports.
Chicago-based Boeing said in a statement: “We are aware of media reports from Jakarta regarding Sriwijaya Air flight SJ-182. Our thoughts are with the crew, passengers and their families. We are in touch with our customer of the airline and we are ready to support them during this difficult time. “
The twin-engine, single-aisle Boeing 737 is one of the most popular aircraft in the world for short and medium-haul flights. The 737-500 is a shorter version of the widely used model 737. Airlines started using this type of aircraft in the 1990s, with production ending two decades ago.
Sriwijaya started operations in 2003 and flies to more than 50 destinations in Indonesia and a handful of neighboring countries, according to its website. Its fleet includes a variety of variants of the 737, as well as the regional twin-engine ATR 72 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 a farmer died when a Boeing 737-200 left the runway in 2008 after a problem hydraulic.
Indonesia, the largest archipelago in the world, with more than 260 million inhabitants, has been affected by land, sea and air transport accidents due to overcrowding of ferries, aging infrastructure and poorly enforced safety standards.
In October 2018, a Boeing 737 MAX 8 jet operated by Lion Air plunged into the Java Sea just minutes after taking off from Jakarta, killing all 189 people on board. The plane involved in Saturday’s incident did not have the automated flight control system that played a role in the crash of Lion Air and another crash of a 737 MAX 8 jet in Ethiopia five months later, leading to the grounding of the MAX 8 for 20 months.
The Lion Air accident was Indonesia’s worst air disaster 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 plunged into the sea, killing 162 people.
Indonesian airlines have previously been banned from flying to the United States and the European Union because they do not meet international safety standards. Both have since lifted the ban, citing improvements in aviation security and greater compliance with international standards.
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