Missing Indonesia plane crashes with 62 passengers, crew on board

Authorities in Indonesia on Saturday declared an Indonesian budget airline plane with 62 people on board missing and subsequently suspected the Boeing 737 to have crashed into the sea shortly after taking off from Jakarta airport.

Indonesian Transport Minister, Budi Karya Sumadi, was said to have narrated that flight tracking data indicated that the Sriwijaya Air Boeing 737-500 made a steep dive about four minutes after it departed the Soekarno-Hatta international airport with 62 passengers including 10 children, and crew on board.

The crash site was identified to be near tourist islands adjacent to the coast of Indonesia’s sprawling capital.

Sriwijaya Air flight SJ182 was en-route Pontianak on Indonesia’s section of Borneo Island said to be about 90 minutes flying time over the Java Sea.

The plane was airborne on Saturday afternoon while a search and rescue operation began with no official results available on Saturday night.

A senior official at the search-and-rescue agency, Bambang Suryo Aji, was cited tom have declared: “We deployed our team, boats and sea riders to the location suspected to be where it went down after losing contact.”

Report indicated that data from FlightRadar24 showed the plane reached an altitude of nearly 11,000 feet (3,350 metres) before dropping suddenly to 250 feet. It then lost contact with air traffic control.

Also, the tracking agency was cited to have narrated on its official Twitter account: “Sriwijaya Air flight #SJ182 lost more than 10,000 feet of altitude in less than one minute, about 4 minutes after departure from Jakarta.”