TRAFFIC SAVED MAN FROM FLIGHT

JAKARTA: An Indonesian man has described how Jakarta’s notorious traffic inadvertently saved his life on Monday after he arrived too late to catch the doomed Lion Air plane which plunged into the sea minutes after taking off.

Sony Setiawan, an official in Indonesia’s finance ministry, had meant to be on board the ill-fated flight JT610, a journey he and his colleagues caught on a weekly basis. But while his friends battled their way through Jakarta’s daily congestion to make the flight, Sony found himself stuck on a toll road for hours. “I usually take (flight) JT610 -- my friends and I always take this plane,” Setiawan told AFP. “I usually arrive in Jakarta at 3am but this morning I arrived at the airport at 6:20 and I missed the flight.”

In 2014, an Airasia plane plunged into the

Java Sea during stormy weather, killing

162 people. The Malaysian airline was flying from the Indonesian city of Surabaya to Singapore

A Mandala Airlines domestic flight crashed shortly after take-off in 2005 into a densely populated suburb in Medan, a city of two million on the island of Sumatra, killing at least 150

In June 2015 a military plane crashed after take-off, coming down in a residential area in Medan, killing around 122 people on board. Around 20 people were also killed on the ground

In 1997, a Silk Air flight crashed into a river near the Indonesian city of Palembang while on its way to Singapore from Jakarta.

All 104 passengers and crew were killed in what was investigated as a possible pilot murder-suicide

An Adam Air plane plunged into the sea off Sulawesi island on New Year’s Day

2007, killing all 102 people on board. The airline was later banned from flying. Indonesian authorities said the pilots lost control after becoming preoccupied with malfunctioning navigational equipment.