Jakarta: Indonesian Flight Vanishes After Taking off From Capital

On Saturday, a Sriwijaya Air passenger plane with 62 people on board reportedly lost contact with air traffic controllers shortly after taking off from Jakarta, Indonesia's capital, per CBS News. The aircraft disappeared from the radar four minutes after taking off. The jet involved was the 737-500, which is much older than Boeing's 737 MAX infamously plagued by problems.

Transportation Minister Budi Karya Sumadi said that the flight involved, Flight SJ182, was delayed for an hour before it took off at 2:36 p.m. local time. The plane then disappeared from the radar four minutes later. Sumadi added that the flight disappeared after the pilot contacted air traffic control to ascend to an altitude of 29,000 feet. Flightradar24, a reliable air tracking service, shared via Twitter that Flight SJ182 lost more than 10,000 feet of altitude in less than a minute.

The airline said that Flight SJ182 was on an estimated 90-minute flight from Jakarta to Pontianak, the capital of the West Kalimantan province on Indonesia's Borneo island. Of the 62 individuals on board the aircraft, 56 were passengers and six were crew members. (It should be noted that Sumadi said earlier during a press conference that there were 12 crew members on the plane, so the exact record is unclear). Local reports from Jakarta have noted that fisherman in the Thousand Islands area, a chain of islands north of Jakarta, spotted metal objects that are believed to be parts of a plane. According to Reuters, Bagus Puruhito, head of Indonesia's search and rescue agency Basarnas, said that teams had been dispatched to Jakarta's northern waters to search for the missing aircraft. The agency noted that no radio beacon signal via the plane had been detected.

Agus Haryono, another official with Basarnas, said that debris suspected to be from Flight SJ182 was found in the area. However, they could not confirm whether the items came from the missing flight. Sriwijaya Air shared that they would be gathering more information about the situation before they released a fuller statement about the incident. As previously mentioned, the older 737-500 model, which is nearly 27 years old, is much older than Boeing's 737 MAX, which was plagued by problems. One 737 MAX model was involved in a crash off of Jakarta in 2018, killing all 189 people onboard the Lion Air flight. When it comes to the 737-500, they are widely flown and do not have the same system that has been implicated in the 737 MAX disasters. A Boeing spokesperson said about the missing Sriwijaya Air flight, "We are aware of media reports from Jakarta, and we are closely monitoring the situation. We are working to gather more information."