Paul Ferdinand Ayorbaba, who is one of the passengers of Lion Air flight JT610, recorded a video showing the last known moments and images of some 189 people who likely perished. Minutes after it takes off, the Boeing 737 Max 8 plunged into the Java Sea, tearing apart the plane and the passengers - including Ayorbaba.
According to the South China Morning Post, Ayorbaba is frequently traveling within Indonesia for a business trip, and the boarding video he recorded is meant for his wife, Inchy Ayorbaba, to comfort her as she felt a little anxious on her husband's trip to the outlying island he'd never visited.
Inchy said in an interview with Indonesian TV that the phone footage was the last contact and message of his husband to her. She brought their three children to the police hospital for DNA testing to help with the identification of the victim.
At the start of the video, the passengers were on a semi-orderly queue while showing their boarding passes to a waiting attendant. And then, Ayorbaba turned the video, showing his name and the flight number, JT-610. The next scene shows how passengers are carrying their bags and pulling their luggage and then turns it into a narrower passage from where the tarmac and waiting planes are apparent between slats.
Ayorbaba then zooms in a plane waiting which was operated by a Lion Air subsidiary, pans to a red and white Lion Air jet that's likely his flight, and then back to the boarding stairs attached to the first plane. Inchy said his husband sent the video to her through messaging app WhatsApp about 35 minutes after the takeoff, based on the timestamp.
She woke up 6:30 AM and saw the video sent by his husband, she didn't look the video details and went back to sleep. But at that moment, the plane started to rapidly crash which ended up in the sea northeast of Jakarta. It was about 9 AM when Inchy hears the news about the Lion Air plane crash, en route to Pangkal Pinang in the Bangka Belitung island chain.
She said she watched the video and saw the boarding pass his husband recorded, so she started to believe that Ayorbaba was one of the passengers involved in the plane crash. Inchy said she called her husband several times and sent him messages on WhatsApp hoping that he didn't go on that flight, but there was no answer from him.
