Body parts and debris found after Indonesia plane crash
JAKARTA, Indonesia — Indonesian rescuers pulled out body parts, pieces of clothing and scraps of metal from the Java Sea early Sunday, a day after a Boeing 737-500 with 62 people onboard crashed shortly after takeoff from Jakarta, officials said.
Officials were hopeful theywere 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.”
“These pieces were found by the SAR team between Lancang Island and Laki Island,” National Search and Rescue Agency Bagus Puruhito in a statement.
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.
Sumadi said Saturday that was delayed for an hour before it took off at 2:36p.m. The Boeing 737-500 disappeared from radar four minutes later, after the pilot contacted air traffic control to ascend to an altitude of 29,000feet, hesaid.
The airline said in a statement that the plane was on an estimated 90-minute flight from Jakarta to Pontianak, the capital of West Kalimantan province on Indonesia’s Borneo island. The plane was carrying 50 passengers and 12 crew members, all Indonesian nationals, including six extra crew for another trip.
Bambang Suryo Aji, the National Search and Rescue Agency’s deputy head of operations and preparedness, said rescuers collected plane debris and clothes that were found by fishermen.
Tracking service Flight radar 24 said on its Twitter feed that Flight SJ182 dropped more than 10,000 feet in less than a minute, about four minutes after takeoff.
Television footage showed relatives and friends of people aboard the plane weeping, praying and hugging each other as they waited at airports in Jakarta and Pontianak.
Chicago-based Boeing said Saturday on Twitter that itwas aware of the incident and monitoring the situation.
Indonesia , the world’s largest archipelago nation, with more than 260 million people, has been plagued by transportation accidents on land, sea and air because of overcrowding on ferries, aging infrastructure and poor safety standards.
In October 2018, a Boeing 737MAX 8 jet operated by Lion Air plunged into the Java Sea after taking off from Jakarta, killing all 189 people on board. The plane in Saturday’s incident did not have the automated flight-control system that played a role in the Lion Air crash and another of a 737MAX 8 jet in Ethiopia five months later, leading to the grounding of the MAX 8 for 20 months.