A Sriwijaya Air jet with 62 people onboard lost touch with air traffic controllers minutes following take-off from Indonesia's capital on a domestic flight on Saturday. Now, "black boxes" from the passenger plane have been located.
Boeing 737 Black Boxes Found
Navy divers affirm that they will be able to retrieve the two flight recorders upon the search operation's resume on Monday. Pieces of the plane and human body parts were also recovered.
According to Transportation Minister Budi Karya Sumadi, Flight SJ182 was delayed for one hour prior to take-off at 2:36 PM. The Boeing 737 vanished shortly after take-off from Jakarta.
Fifty-six passengers and six crew members were on board the flight as reports indicate the jet was carrying seven children, including three babies, reported The Sun.
A search and rescue mission was underway on Saturday following the loss of contact, reported The World News.
FlightRadar24 tracker indicated Sriwijaya Air flight SJ182, said to be a Boeing 737-500, lost over 10,000 feet of altitude in less than a minute, approximately four minutes after departure from the Soekarno-Hatta International Airport.
The National Search and Rescue Agency head, Bagus Puruhito, stated officials believe they identified the location of the cockpit voice recorder and flight data recorder. This is due to the fact that emergency signals transmitted by the devices were detected by a navy ship's sonar system.
The Boeing 737-500 took off from Jakarta at about 1:56 PM and lost touch with the control tower at 2:40 PM, according to Indonesian Transportation Ministry spokesperson Adita Irawati.
The airline indicated in a statement that the plane was on about a 90-minute flight from Jakarta to Pontianak, the capital of West Kalimantan province on the Borneo island, reported Evening Standard.
Boeing 737-500 reportedly lost over 10,000 feet in altitude in one minute, four minutes following its departure. The plane's last known altitude was 250 feet, the highest altitude being 10,900 feet.
The plane is suspected of having crashed into the sea.
Flight tracking data displayed the Sriwijaya Air Boeing 737-500 plunged into a steep dive an estimated four minutes after its departure from Soekarno-Hatta international airport.
The suspected crash location is near tourist islands just off the coast of Jakarta.
The plane departed on Saturday afternoon. A search and rescue operation has commenced with no official results available on Saturday night.
The Boeing 737-500 vanished from radar four minutes after its took-off, following the pilot's contact with air traffic control to soar to an altitude of 29,000 feet (8,839 meters).
The airplane was not the 737 MAX model involved in the two latest fatal crashes.
Sriwijaya Air flight SJ182 descended 10,000 ft in less than a minute then plunged into the Java Sea.
According to locals on Thousand Island, they heard two blasts prior to discovering debris floating in the sea.
The declaration came two days after Boeing stated it would pay $2.5 billion to settle a United States Justice Department probing and admit that employees misled regulators regarding the safety of its 737 Max aircraft. The aircraft experienced two fatal crashes shortly after entering airline service.
In the middle of 2017, the first airlines began flying the 737 Max.
As it flew over the Java Sea, the plane dived 10,000 feet in less than 60 seconds.
The plane, identified as a 27-year-old Boeing 737-500, was in decent condition, according to the airline's chief executive, Jefferson Irwin Jauwena.
An investigation is underway regarding the vanished plane and under cooperation with the National Transportation Safety Committee and National Search and Rescue Agency.
Boeing spokeswoman Dana Salloum remarked they are working to gather more information.
