Flight SJ182 carrying 50 passengers has disappeared over the sea, shortly after takeoff from Jakarta, reports claim.
The Sriwijaya Air plane took off from the Indonesian capital on Saturday and was heading to Pontianak in West Kalimantan province when it lost contact with the control room, according to local media reports.
The plane – believed to be a Boeing B737-500 – is understood to have fallen 10,000 feet in less than 60 seconds just four minutes after it took off.
Indonesia’s Transportation Ministry said on Saturday that it had lost contact with a passenger jet after it took off from the capital, Jakarta, and flew over the Java Sea.
The ministry said that the last contact with the plane, Sriwijaya Air Flight 182, was made at 2:40 p.m. local time. The Boeing 737-524 was bound for the city of Pontianak on the island of Borneo. No information was immediately available about the number of people aboard.
Flightradar24 tweeted: ‘We are following reports of a missing Boeing 737-500 in Indonesia. We hope to have more information soon.’
Sriwijaya Air is a small carrier with a 737-only fleet. According to Airfleets.net it is operating only nine aircraft at present: three -500 series planes, five -800s and one -900.
Regarding the flight on Saturday, Sriwijaya Air said in a preliminary statement that “management is still communicating and investigating this matter and will immediately issue an official statement after obtaining the actual information.”
“Whenever we hear this kind of news, we get ready,” Ony Suryo Wibowo, an investigator for the Indonesian National Transportation Safety Committee, said on Saturday. “We are gathering all the information we can get.”
