NO SURVIVORS
Aircraft carrying 189 people, including Indian, Italian nationals, feared dead
INVESTIGATORS are scrambling to locate Lion Air Flight JT610’s black box to determine why the almost brand-new Boeing 737 MAX 8 slammed into the ocean off West Java yesterday, killing 189 people on board. Authorities say the pilot had asked to return to base after the plane took off from Jakarta. It lost contact with the ground after 13 minutes.
LION AIR: AIRCRAFT SUFFERED ‘TECHNICAL DIFFICULTIES’ ON EARLIER FLIGHT FROM BALI TO JAKARTA
FIRST ACCIDENT INVOLVING THE 737 MAX 8, A VARIANT OF BOEING’S HUGELY POPULAR WORKHORSE
AN Indonesian aircraft with 189 people on board crashed into the sea yesterday as it tried to circle back to the capital, Jakarta, from where it had taken off minutes earlier, and there were likely no survivors, officials said.
Lion Air Flight JT610, an almost new Boeing 737 MAX 8, was en route to Pangkal Pinang, capital of the Bangka-Belitung tin mining region.
Rescue officials said they had recovered human remains from the crash site, 15km off the coast.
Indonesia is one of the world’s fastest-growing aviation markets, but its safety record is patchy. If all aboard had died, the crash would be the country’s second-worst air disaster since 1997, industry experts said.
The pilot had asked to return to base (RTB) after the plane took off from Jakarta. It lost contact with ground staff after 13 minutes.
“An RTB was requested and approved but we’re trying to find out why,” Soerjanto Tjahjono, head of Indonesia’s Transport Safety Committee, said.
“We hope the black box can be found soon,” he said, referring to the cockpit voice recorder and flight data recorder.
Search-and-rescue (SAR) agency head Muhmmad Syaugi said no distress signal had been received from the aircraft’s emergency transmitter. Yusuf Latief, spokesman of the agency, said there were likely no survivors.
At least 23 government officials, four employees of state tin miner PT Timah and three employees of a Timah subsidiary, were on the plane. A Lion Air official said one Italian passenger and one Indian pilot were on board.
Lion Air Group chief executive officer Edward Sirait said the aircraft had a technical problem on a flight from the resort island of Bali to Jakarta, but it had been “resolved according to procedure”.
Sirait declined to describe the problem, but said none of its other aircraft of that model had the same issue. Lion had operated 11 Boeing 737 MAX 8s and it had no plans to ground the rest of them, he said.
The accident is the first to be reported involving the widelysold Boeing 737 MAX, an updated and more fuel-efficient version of the manufacturer’s workhorse single-aisle jet.
Privately-owned Lion Air said the aircraft had been in operation since August, was airworthy, with its pilot and co-pilot together having accumulated 11,000 hours of flying time. The plane went down in waters about 30 to 35m deep.
Bambang Suryo, operational director of the SAR agency, said 150 rescuers and 40 divers were on the site, using an underwater drone to search for the fuselage, where many of the victims were believed to be trapped.
The flight took off in clear weather at 6.20am (7.20am Malaysian time) and was due to have landed in Pangkal Pinang at 7.20am (8.20am Malaysian time).
Distraught relatives of those on board arrived at the airport in Jakarta and Pangkal Pinang.
President Joko Widodo said authorities were focusing on the SAR operation, and he called for the country’s prayers and support.
Boeing was saddened by the loss, it said, and was ready to provide technical assistance for the investigation.
Under international rules, the United States National Transportation Safety Board will automatically assist with the inquiry, backed up by technical advisers from Boeing and USFrench engine maker CFM International, co-owned by General Electric and Safran.
Data from FlightRadar24 shows the first sign of something amiss was around two minutes into the flight, when the plane had reached 610m.
It descended more than 152m and veered to the left before climbing again to 1,524 m, where it stayed during most of the rest of the flight.
It began gaining speed in the final moments and reached 397 mph before data was lost when it was at 1,113m.