A Sriwijaya plane crashed with 62 onboard shortly after it took off from a Jakarta airport on January 9.
Reports from Flight Radar, an air traffic tracking service, also showed that the Sriwijaya flight SJ182 lost more than 10.000 feet of altitude in less than one minute after taking off from a Jakarta airport.
There were no immediate clues on what may have caused the sudden descent. However, safety experts have said that most accidents are caused as a result of a multitude of factors, which can take months to establish, Reuters reported.
The plane was a Boeing 737-500. A statement released by the flight says that were 56 passengers and six crew members on board. The regular estimated time for this flight was about 90 minutes.Sriwijaya Air flight #SJ182 lost more than 10.000 feet of altitude in less than one minute, about 4 minutes after departure from Jakarta.https://t.co/fNZqlIR2dz pic.twitter.com/MAVfbj73YN
— Flightradar24 (@flightradar24) January 9, 2021
The flight was en route from Jakarta to Pontianak in Indonesia. All those on board were Indonesian, Indonesia’s transport safety committee said, reports said.
"A Sriwijaya (Air) plane from Jakarta to Pontianak (on Borneo island) with call sign SJY182 has lost contact," said ministry spokesman Adita Irawati told AFP.
The flight last made contact at 2:40 pm (0740 GMT).
Sriwijaya said it was only looking into investigating the ongoing incident. However, Irawati has also said that Indonesia's search and rescue agency and the National Transportation Safety Commission were also investigating the matter.
This is not the first time instance of such a situation. 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.
After this, a subsequent crash in Ethiopia saw Boeing Co pay more than $2.5 billion in fines and compensation after reaching a settlement with the U.S. Department of Justice over two plane crashes that killed a total of 346 people and led to the grounding of its 737 MAX jetliner.
Local TV stations in Indonesia reported Fishermen in the Thousand Islands regency finding debris and oil spill debris in the water with no confirmation if they are from the missing plane.
Founded in 2003, Jakarta-based Sriwijaya Air group flies largely within Indonesia. The airline has a solid safety record until now, with no onboard casualties in four incidents recorded on the Aviation Safety Network database, per a Reuters report.
--With inputs from agencies