Boeing 737 aircraft by Sriwijaya Air, Indonesian airline, had crashed four minutes after take-off from Jakarta airport, Indonesia carrying 62 people.
The flight SJ182 was on route from Jakarta to Pontianak which is the capital of Indonesian province West Kalimantan. The aircraft was Boeing 737-500 model with the registration PK-CLC. First flight for this aircraft was in May 1994 (26 years old).
The flight took off from Jakarta at 07:36 UTC and four minutes later the signal was lost at 07:40 UTC.
The Sriwijaya Air disappeared from radars four minutes into its journey to Pontianak in West Kalimantan province.
It is thought to have dropped more than 3,000m (10,000ft) in less than a minute, according to flight tracking website Flightradar24.com which can be seen on the image below.
Witnesses said they had seen and heard at least one explosion.
SJ182 granual data with an instant drop in altitude at 07:40 UTC
It did not send a distress signal, according to the head of national search and rescue agency Air Marshal Bagus Puruhito.
There were thought to be 50 passengers – including seven children and three babies – and 12 crew on board, though the plane has a capacity of 130. Everyone on board was Indonesian, officials say.
It was in good condition, Sriwijaya Air chief executive Jefferson Irwin Jauwena told reporters. Take-off had been delayed for 30 minutes due to heavy rain, he said.
The plane went missing about 20km (12 miles) north of the capital Jakarta, not far from where Lion Air crashed in October 2018.
Sriwijaya Air, founded in 2003, is a local budget airline which flies to Indonesian and other South-East Asian destinations.
Indonesia, though, has a relatively poor record on aviation safety. For more than a decade carriers from the region were banned from flying into the EU. Until recently, the perception had been that standards were improving, and in 2018 all Indonesian airlines were removed from the EU’s blacklist.
