INDONESIA: Air flight goes missing with 59 onboard shortly after takeoff

INDONESIAN Airline, Sriwijaya Air, this afternoon lost contact with its passenger plane, Air flight SJ182, and disappeared from radars shortly after takeoff.

According to flight tracker website, FlightRadar24, the plane lost more than 10,000 feet of altitude in less than a minute.

The air plane went missing from the Indonesian capital of Jakarta with 59 passengers onboard.

After losing altitude, flight SJ182’s flight path was seen ending off the coast just north of Jakarta, flight tracking showed.

Among the 59 flight passengers onboard are two pilots, four cabin crew, five children, a baby and the other passengers.

According to reports by Indonesia’s iNews and newspaper, Republika, Air flight SJ182, a Boeing 737-500, took off from Soekarno-Hatta Airport and was heading to Pontianak, the provincial capital of West Kalimantan.

It should be recalled that 189 people were killed in October 2018 when a Lion Air Boeing 737 MAX jet slammed into the Java Sea, shortly after take-off from Jakarta during a routine one-hour flight.

Boeing was hit with a $2.5 billion fine for allegedly defrauding regulators of the 737 MAX model, after it was grounded internationally due to a second fatal flight in Ethiopia.

In comments to Indonesian newspaper Merdeka, the Regent of the Thousand Islands has said he had information that “something fell and exploded on Male Island.”

Manager of the Soekarno-Hatta Airport Branch Communications, Haerul Anwar, had previously said that the Sriwijaya Air plane had lost contact around Lancang Island — part of the Thousand Islands chain.

More information later