Jakarta: A Sriwijaya Air passenger jet with 62 people on board slipped off the radar on Saturday, minutes after take-off from Jakarta, officials and media said.
Flight SJ182 was delayed for over an hour before it took off at around 2.30 pm (local time), Budi Karya Sumadi, Indonesia’s transportation minister, said.
The jet disappeared four minutes later, after the pilot informed the air traffic control of ascending to an altitude of 29,000 feet (8,839 meters).
The airline said the plane was on a 90-minute flight from Jakarta to Pontianak, capital of West Kalimantan province on Borneo island.
The plane had56 passengers and six crew on board.
Sumadi said vessels, including four warships, were deployed in a search and rescue mission around Lancang island and Laki island, part of the Thousand Islands chain north of Jakarta.
Local media said fishermen found metal objects that looked like parts of a plane in the Thousand Islands.
Sriwijaya Air is one of Indonesia’s low-fare airlines, flying to multiple domestic and international destinations.
Indonesia, the world’s largest archipelago with more than 260 million people, has seen multiple transportation land, sea and air accidents due to overcrowding, creaking infrastructure and poor safety standards.
In October 2018, a Lion Air Boeing 737 MAX 8 jet plunged into Java Sea minutes after take-off from Jakarta, killing all 189 on board.
The Sriwijaya Air plane in Saturday’s incident did not have the automated flight-control system blamed for the Lion Air crash and another crash in Ethiopia five months later, leading to the grounding of the aircraft for 20 months.
The Lion Air crash was the worst airline disaster in in the archipelago since 1997, when 234 people were killed on a Garuda airlines flight on Sumatra island.
In December 2014, an AirAsia flight from Surabaya to Singapore plunged into the sea, claiming 162 lives.
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