Indonesia plane crash: divers discover wreckage after aircraft signal detected | World news
[ad_1]
Indonesian divers have located wreckage from a Boeing 737-500 in the Java Sea, a day after the aircraft with 62 people onboard crashed shortly after takeoff from Jakarta, officials said.
The wreckage was discovered on Sunday at a depth of 23 metres (75ft), and included pieces of fuselage with aircraft registration parts. Earlier in the day, rescuers had retrieved body parts, pieces of clothing and scraps of metal from the water’s surface. There was no sign yet of survivors.
“We received reports from the diver team that the visibility in the water is good and clear, allowing the discovery of some parts of the plane,” Air Chief Marshal Hadi Tjahjanto said in a statement. “We are sure that is the point where the plane crashed.
“Hopefully until this afternoon the current conditions and the view under the sea are still good so that we can continue the search.”
The discovery in the search for Sriwijaya Air Flight 182 came after sonar equipment on a navy ship detected a signal from the aircraft at a location that fitted the coordinates from the last contact made by the pilots before the plane went missing on Saturday afternoon.
It’s still unclear what caused the crash.
“I represent the government and all Indonesians in expressing my deep condolences for this tragedy,” president Joko Widodo said. “We are doing our best to save the victims. We pray together so that the victims can be found,” he said, adding that he had asked the National Transport Safety Committee to conduct an investigation.
The aircraft was setting off on a domestic flight from Pontianak, the capital of West Kalimantan province, to Jakarta when it plunged into the ocean minutes after takeoff on Saturday afternoon.
Irfansyah Riyanto, brother of Flight SJ 182 passenger Ratih Windania, rushed to Jakarta’s Soekarno Hatta airport late on Saturday. On Sunday, he was still hoping for good news about his sister and four other family members on the flight, including his parents.
“We feel powerless, we can only wait and hope to have any information soon,” Irfansyah told reporters. Irfansyah said his relatives had originally been due to take an earlier flight operated by Sriwijaya’s unit NAM Air and he was unclear why that was changed.
His sister and her two children had been at the end of a three-week holiday and were taking the 740km trip home to Pontianak on the island of West Kalimantan.
“Bye bye family. We’re heading home for now,” Ratih had posted on Instagram from Jakarta’s airport, with pictures of three laughing children and two emojis blowing kisses.
Police asked families to provide information to help identify any bodies retrieved such as dental records and DNA samples. At the police hospital, the brother of co-pilot Diego Mamahit said he had been asked for a blood sample.
“I believe my younger brother survived, these are just for the police procedure,” Chris Mamahit said. “Diego is a good man, we still believe Diego survived.”
On Saturday, fishermen in the area around Thousand Islands, a chain of islands north of Jakarta’s coast, reported hearing an explosion around 2.30pm.
“We heard something explode, we thought it was a bomb or a tsunami since after that we saw the big splash from the water,” fisherman Solihin, who goes by one name, told the Associated Press by phone.
“It was raining heavily and the weather was so bad. So it is difficult to see around clearly. But we can see the splash and a big wave after the sounds. We were very shocked and directly saw the plane debris and the fuel around our boat.”
Transportation minister Budi Karya Sumadi said Flight SJ182 was delayed for an hour before it took off at 2.36pm. It disappeared from radar four minutes later, after the pilot contacted air traffic control to ascend to an altitude of 29,000ft (8,839 metres), he said.
There were 62 people on board, including seven children and three babies.
“We are aware of media reports from Jakarta regarding Sriwijaya Air flight SJ-182,” Boeing said in a statement. “Our thoughts are with the crew, passengers, and their families. We are in contact with our airline customer and stand ready to support them during this difficult time.”
Authorities established two crisis centres, one at the airport and one at a port. Families gathered to wait for news of loved ones.
On social media, people began circulating the flight manifesto with photos and videos of those who were listed as passengers. One video shows a woman with her children waving goodbye while walking through the airport.
Sriwijaya Air’s president, Jefferson Irwin Jauwena, said the plane, which was 26 years old and had previously been used by airlines in the United States, was airworthy. He told reporters on Saturday that the plane had previously flown to Pontianak and Pangkal Pinang city on the same day.
Indonesia, the world’s largest archipelago nation, with more than 260 million people, has been plagued by transportation accidents on land, sea and air because of overcrowding on ferries, ageing infrastructure and poorly enforced safety standards.
In October 2018, a Boeing 737 Max 8 jet operated by Lion Air plunged into the Java Sea just minutes after taking off from Jakarta, killing all 189 people on board. The plane involved in Saturday’s incident did not have the automated flight-control system that played a role in the Lion Air crash and another crash of a 737 Max 8 jet in Ethiopia five months later, leading to the grounding of the Max 8 for 20 months.
The Lion Air crash was Indonesia’s worst airline disaster since 1997, when 234 people were killed on a Garuda airlines flight near Medan on Sumatra island. In December 2014, an AirAsia flight from the Indonesian city of Surabaya to Singapore plunged into the sea, killing 162 people.
Sriwijaya Air has only has several minor incidents in the past, though a farmer was killed in 2008 when plane went off the runway while landing due to a hydraulic issue.