Indonesia Plane Crash Kills 62 Passengers; Leaves Bodies Missing in the Sea

Search Operation Underway For Sriwijaya Air Flight SJ182
Getty Images: Oscar Siagian / Stringer

Indonesia plane crash Sriwijaya Air flight SJ182, which departed at 2.36 pm local time from Soekarno Hatta International Airport (7.36 am GMT).

Indonesia Plane Crash Kills 62 Passengers

The routine domestic flight to Pontianak on Borneo's island, covering 452 miles, is expected to take 95 minutes.

Indonesian navy divers will resume their search off the north coast of Java shortly before 6 am for a Boeing 737. An Indonesia plane crashed into the sea shortly after taking off on Saturday afternoon from Jakarta.

The FlightRadar24 flight-tracking website announced that the aircraft set off southwest and initially climbed naturally, turning northeast to its destination.

Jessica Washington of Al Jazeera, a Jakarta reporter, said that the 62 people on board included seven children and three babies. The authorities believed they had uncovered aircraft debris on this horrible Indonesia plane crash.

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After sonar equipment detected a signal from the plane, officials were hopeful they were honing in on the wreckage of Sriwijaya Air Flight 182.

Transportation Minister Budi Karya Sumadi told reporters that authorities had launched massive search efforts after identifying "the possible location of the crash site."

In this Indonesia plane crash, Bambang Suryo Aji, deputy head of operations and preparedness of the National Search and Rescue Agency, said rescuers retrieved airplane debris and clothes and handed over the items for further review to the National Transportation Safety Committee to decide if they were from the missing airplane.

Aji said a radio beacon had identified no signal from the aircraft. He said his organization was investigating why there was no signal sent by the aircraft's emergency locator transmitter or ELT that could confirm if it had crashed.

Anglers in the Thousand Islands district, a chain of islands north of the coast of Jakarta, reported hearing an explosion at around 2.30 pm on Saturday (6.30 pm AEDT).

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Two crisis centers, one at the airport and one at the port, were set up by the authorities. Families gathered to wait for loved ones to hear the news from this Indonesia plane crash.

People started circulating the flight manifesto on social media with images and videos of passengers identified as passengers.

With more than 260 million people, Indonesia, the world's largest archipelago country, has been plagued by such transportation accidents on land, sea, and air due to overcrowding on ferries, aging infrastructure, and poorly implemented safety standards.

In the past, Sriwijaya Air had only had a few minor accidents, although a farmer was killed in 2008 when a landing plane left the runway due to a hydraulic problem. It is not the first time that an Indonesian plane crash has happened around its neighboring countries.

In 2007, the United States barred Indonesian carriers from operating in the country, but reversed the decision in 2016, citing improvements to international aviation standards enforcement.

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