CRASH AFTERMATH
Body parts, debris pulled from sea after Indo air disaster
Search-and-rescue officials retrieved human remains, personal belongings and aircraft debris from the Java Sea on Monday hours after an Indonesian airliner plummeted into the water shortly after takeoff, killing all 189 people aboard.
The new Boeing 737 Max 8 operated by Lion Air had been cleared to return to the capital after the pilot made a “return to base” request about three minutes after takeoff, said Novie Riyanto, head of AirNav Indonesia, which manages the country’s air traffic.
Flight JT610, bound for Pangkal Pinang on Indonesia’s Bangka Island, plunged into the sea about 10 minutes later in normal weather.
The plane, which the budget airline received in August, had experienced a technical problem on its previous flight, Lion Air President Edward Sirait said.
Her didn’t elaborate but said the issue was resolved in accordance with Boeing’s procedures and would be part of the crash probe, The Independent reported.
The airline said the plane was carrying 181 passengers — including one child and two babies — and eight crew members.
Victims’ loved ones cried, prayed and hugged as they waited Monday at Jakarta’s airport and at Pangkal Pinang’s airport for news.
Latief Nurbana said he and his wife, Yeti Eka Sumiati, had stayed up late Sunday talking to their son Lutfi Nuramdani, 24, before he got on the plane to return to his home in Pangkal Pinang.
“We were chatting together about his wife who is now seven months’ pregnant, his plans and his dreams with his own small family until we fell asleep,” he said as his wife wept.
“Now he’s gone. We can’t believe that he left us this way, we can’t believe that his plane crashed. That’s something we only see on TV news, now it happened to my son. We want to see his body, his face, his remains.”
National Search and Rescue Agency chief Muhammad Syaugi said that no distress signal had been received from the aircraft. He said he was certain the jet’s black box would be found soon due to the water’s shallow depth of 100 to 115 feet.
Data from the Flightradar24 flight-tracker service shows the plane was at 2,000 feet about two minutes into the flight, at around 6:20 a.m., when it descended more than 500 feet and veered left.
The aircraft then climbed back to 5,000 feet, where it stayed during most of the rest of the brief flight.
It began gaining speed, reaching 345 knots, or 397 mph, before data was lost when it was at 3,650 feet.
Under international rules, the US National Transportation Safety Board will assist the probe, backed by Boeing and CFM International, an engine maker co-owned by General Electric and Safran.
The tragedy was Indonesia’s worst air disaster since 1997, when a Garuda Indonesia A300 crashed in Medan, killing 214 people.
Founded in 1999, Lion Air has had just one other fatal accident, in 2004, when an MD-82 crashed upon landing in Surakarta, Indonesia, killing 25 people.