A Boeing 737-500 Sriwijaya Air plane crashed into the sea Saturday shortly after it took off from Jakarta on a domestic flight with 62 passengers aboard, according to multiple reports Sunday.
Indonesian rescue and Navy divers from more than 10 ships resumed search Sunday for the missing aircraft which was flying from the Indonesian capital to Borneo when it lost contact four minutes into the flight.
The ill-fated commercial aircraft reportedly crashed near an island roughly 20 kilometers from the airport. Debris found by fishermen -- including clothes and a portion of an emergency chute believed to come from the plane -- was being examined to determine if it was from the missing plane, authorities said.
The plane is not a 737 Max, the Boeing version that was grounded from March 2019 until December last year after two fatal crashes. Budi Karya, Indonesian Transport Minister, told a media briefing that 62 people had been on board Flight SJ 182, including 12 crewmembers.
In a statement, Basarnas said it would send a team to the Thousand Islands area to help search and rescue victims. All passengers were Indonesian, Indonesia's Transport Safety Committee said.
A rescue diver interviewed by Kompas TV said his team uses an underwater metal detector and a pinger locator to detect signals for the aircraft's black box. Helicopters were also on standby to search the air.
Based on monitoring by global flight tracker Flightradar24, the aircraft descended 10,000 feet in under a minute before it eventually disappeared from radar.
The director of national search and rescue agency, Air Marshal Bagus Puruhito, said it did not send a distress signal. Witnesses said they heard at least one explosion.
"The plane fell like lightning into the sea and exploded in the water," fisherman Solihin told the BBC Indonesian service. "It was pretty close to us, the shards of a kind of plywood almost hit my ship."
Sriwijaya Airlines chief executive officer Jefferson Irwin Jauwena said the 26-year-old plane was in good condition before it flew. In a conference with reporters on Saturday, Jauwena said they hope "that your prayers can help the search process run smoothly. We hope all is well," reports quoted him in his remarks.
There were no immediate indications on what may have caused the plane to make a sudden drop, and authorities said most air accidents are caused by a host of factors that can take months to establish.
