More than 60 feared dead as Indonesian Boeing 737 crashes into the sea

Indonesian rescuers pulled out body parts, pieces of clothing and scraps of metal from the Java Sea early on Sunday morning, a day after a Boeing 737-500 with 62 people onboard crashed shortly after takeoff from Jakarta, officials said.

Officials were hopeful they were honing in on the wreckage of Sriwijaya Air Flight 182 after sonar equipment detected a signal from the aircraft.

Transportation Minister Budi Karya Sumadi told reporters that authorities have launched massive search efforts after identifying "the possible location of the crash site".

"As of this morning, we've received two (body) bags, one with passenger belongings and the other with body parts," Jakarta police spokesman Yusri Yunus told Metro TV.

"These pieces were found by the SAR team between Lancang Island and Laki Island," National Search and Rescue Agency Bagus Puruhito said in a statement.

Sriwijaya Air flight #SJ182 lost more than 10.000 feet of altitude in less than one minute, about 4 minutes after departure from Jakarta.https://t.co/fNZqlIR2dz pic.twitter.com/MAVfbj73YN

— Flightradar24 (@flightradar24) January 9, 2021

Mr Puruhito said signals had been detected in two points that could be the black box.

Indonesian military chief Air Chief Marshal Hadi Tjahjanto said teams on the Rigel navy ship equipped with a remote-operated vehicle had detected a signal from the aircraft, which fit the coordinates from the last contact made by the pilots before the plane went missing.

"We have immediately deployed our divers from navy's elite unit to determine the finding to evacuate the victims," Tjahjanto said.

More than 12 hours since the Boeing plane operated by the Indonesian airline lost contact, little is known about what caused the crash.

The Boeing 737-500 with 62 people on board was en route to Pontianak in West Kalimantan province on Indonesia's Borneo island before it disappeared on Saturday from radar screens four minutes after takeoff.

Search teams and fishermen had retrieved some debris and a section of an emergency chute believed to come from the jet but have yet to find the fuselage.

"We have prepared all the equipment and are ready at the spot where the debris was found yesterday," Muhammad Yassin, director of marine police (POLAIR) told the TVOne channel from navy vessel KRI Gilimanuk.

POLAIR will focus its search on the outer ring of the Laki and Lancang islands off the Jakarta coast, he said. The sea in this area is about 20 to 23 metres (65-75 feet) deep.

Helicopters were also on standby at an airport near Jakarta to launch a search from the air.

The Indonesian meteorological agency has warned of a risk of heavy rain and strong winds that could hamper the search and rescue efforts.

Flight SJ182 took off from the Indonesian capital, Jakarta, and then plunged more than 10,000 feet into the sea. Officials said the plane was carrying 50 passengers – including ten children - and 12 crew. 

At the time of the crash, local fishermen spoke of hearing a thunderous explosion. When they reached the area, they discovered pieces of wreckage from the airliner. 

"The plane fell like lightning into the sea and exploded in the water," one fisherman told the BBC’s Indonesian service. "It was pretty close to us, the shards of a kind of plywood almost hit my ship."

Passengers' relatives and next of kin gathered at Jakarta and Pontianak airports, many of them in tears.

Among those waiting at Pontianak Airport was father-of-three Yaman Zai, who had moved there from Jakarta for work last year. His wife and children, who had remained in Jakarta, were on the flight to meet him for a holiday, having not seen him for nearly a year because of the Covid lockdown.

“They are my wife and three children, including my newly born baby”, he told the local tribunnews.com. “My last contact was around 13:30 which my wife responded that the kids were so excited."

He said he had arrived at the airport well in time for the flight's arrival and then grown worried when there was no news of the plane landing. Eventually he saw TV reports that the plane had had gone missing. 

“Did I kill my family?” he asked. “I sent them here to get fun."  

Indonesia, the world's largest archipelago nation, has a chequered record on transport safety, with numerous air and sea accidents over the years blamed on aging infrastructure and poorly enforced safety rules. In October 2018, a Boeing 737 MAX 8 jet operated by Lion Air also crashed taking off from Jakarta, killing all 189 people on board.

The plane involved in Saturday's crash was a Boeing 737-500 belonging to the Sriwijaya Air airline, a local discount carrier that flies to dozens of domestic and regional destinations.  After being delayed for an hour because of heavy rain, it took off at 2.36pm local time but then lost control with the airport control just four minutes later.

Air traffic control officials said that seconds before the plane disappeared, they had asked the pilot why it was heading northwest instead of on its expected flight path. A post on the Twitter feed of tracking service Flightradar24 said that Flight SJ182 "lost more than 10,000 feet of altitude in less than one minute, about 4 minutes after departure from Jakarta".

An investigation is underway to determine the cause of the crash, which remained unclear as of Saturday night.  Bambang Suryo Aji, the Indonesian National Search and Rescue Agency's deputy head of operations, said no radio beacon signal had been detected from the plane.

He said his agency was investigating why its emergency locator transmitter was not transmitting a signal that could confirm whether it had crashed.

The Boeing 737-500 involved in Saturday's incident was a 27-year-old model. It does not have the automated flight-control system that played a role in both the Lion Air crash in Indonesia in 2018, and another crash of a 737 MAX 8 jet in Ethiopia five months later.

Those two crashes led to grounding worldwide of the Boeing MAX 8 fleet for 20 months. Sriwijaya Air, which was founded in 2003, has had a solid safety record until now. Flight experts said it was not unusual for 27-year-old planes to still be in use. 

But the crash may still raise fresh questions about the safety record of airlines in Indonesia, which saw another major air disaster in 2014, when an AirAsia aircraft crashed en route to Singapore, killing 162 people.  Between 2007 and 2018, Indonesian airlines were subject to an EU flight ban, which was lifted after safety standards were deemed to have improved.