JAKARTA: An Indonesian budget airline jet suspected to have crashed into the sea just minutes after take-off from Jakarta had 62 passengers and crew on board, including 10 children, the country’s transport minister said on Saturday evening.
“The total number of passengers was 50 along with 12 crew,” Budi Karya Sumadi told reporters, adding that the figure included seven children and three infants.
The Sriwijaya Air Boeing 737-500 lost contact with air traffic control about four minutes after take-off on its way to Pontianak on the island of Borneo.
Rescuers later found suspected debris in waters north of the city, an official of the Basarnas search and rescue agency said.
Agus Haryono told Reuters it had not been confirmed that the debris came from Sriwijaya Air Flight SJ182.
The plane had left Soekarno-Hatta international airport at 2.40pm local time for the 90-minute flight over the Java Sea to Kalimantan, Indonesia’s section of Borneo.
Flight-tracking data showed the Boeing 737-500, which was 26 years old, plunged into a steep dive just four minutes after take-off.
Data from FlightRadar24 said the jet reached an altitude of nearly 11,000 feet (3,350 metres) before dropping to 250 feet. It then lost contact with air traffic control.
“Sriwijaya Air flight #SJ182 lost more than 10,000 feet of altitude in less than one minute, about 4 minutes after departure from Jakarta,” the tracking agency said on its official Twitter account.
The broadcaster Kompas TV quoted local fishermen as saying they had found debris near islands off the coast of Jakarta, but it could not be immediately confirmed as having belonged to the missing jet.
The budget airline, which has about 19 Boeing jets that fly to destinations in Indonesia and Southeast Asia, said it was investigating the loss of contact.
In October 2018, 189 people were killed when a Lion Air Boeing 737 Max jet slammed into the Java Sea about 12 minutes after take-off from Jakarta on a routine one-hour flight.
That crash — and a subsequent fatal flight in Ethiopia — resulted in Boeing hit with $2.5 billion in fines over claims it defrauded regulators overseeing the 737 Max model, which was grounded worldwide following the two deadly crashes.