A Boeing 737 passenger jet with 62 people onboard is believed to have crashed into the sea after plummeting 10,000 feet shortly following takeoff from Jakarta, with witnesses claiming they heard two explosions.
The Sriwijaya Air plane took off from Soekarno-Hatta international airport on Saturday at 1.56pm for a 90-minute flight over the Java Sea between Jakarta and Pontianak in West Kalimantan – Indonesia’s section of Borneo island.
But at 2.40pm – just four minutes after takeoff – the Boeing B737-500 plane plunged nearly 11,000 feet in less than 60 seconds to an altitude of just 250 feet.
A fisherman, named Solihin, told the BBC that he had been at sea when he witnessed the plane crash into the water near to his ship: ‘The plane fell like lightning into the sea and exploded in the water. It was pretty close to us, the shards of a kind of plywood almost hit my ship.’
There are feared to be 62 people on the 26-year-old plane, including 56 passengers – seven of whom are children and three are babies – as well as two pilots and four cabin crew.
The missing plane is an older model than the Boeing 737 MAX jet involved in two earlier fatal crashes – including the Indonesian Lion Air crash in 2018 which killed 189.
Families of the missing people are now fearing the worst after rescuers looking for flight SJ182 said they discovered suspected debris in the ocean north of the capital.
Locals on a nearby island said they heard two explosions before discovering metal pieces, cables and fragments of a pair of jeans floating in the sea.