Suspected debris of Indonesian plane found: Rescue official

Jakarta - The Boeing 737-500, en route to Pontianak in West Kalimantan.

Rescuers looking for an Indonesian plane that lost contact after taking off from the capital Jakarta on Saturday have found suspected debris in waters north of the city, an official of the Basarnas search and rescue agency said.

Agus Haryono told Reuters it had not been confirmed that the debris came from Sriwijaya Air Flight SJ182, which lost contact after taking off with more than 62 people aboard.

The Boeing 737-500, en route to Pontianak in West Kalimantan, disappeared from radar screens after taking off just after 2.30 p.m. (0730 GMT).

Indonesian Transport Minister Budi Karya told a news conference that 62 people had been aboard, including 12 crew. Another official had said earlier there were 56 passengers and six crew.

Bagus Puruhito, head of the country’s search and rescue agency Basarnas, said teams had been dispatched to search the waters north of Jakarta. No radio beacon signal had been detected, the agency said.

Agus Haryono, another official with the agency, told Reuters that debris suspected to be from the plane had been found in the sea, but it had not been confirmed that it came from the missing flight.

Reliable tracking service Flightradar24 said on its Twitter feed that Flight SJ182 “lost more than 10,000 feet of altitude in less than one minute, about 4 minutes after departure from Jakarta”.

Sriwijaya Air, an Indonesian airline, said in a statement it was gathering more detailed information regarding the flight before it could make a fuller statement.

The nearly 27-year-old Boeing 737-500 was much older than Boeing’s problem-plagued 737 MAX model, one of which crashed off Jakarta in late 2018, killing all 189 people aboard the Lion Air flight. Older 737 models are widely flown and do not have the system implicated in the MAX safety crisis.

A Boeing spokeswoman said, “We are aware of media reports from Jakarta, and are closely monitoring the situation. We are working to gather more information”.

Indonesian television channels showed pictures of suspected wreckage.

“We found some cables, a piece of jeans, and pieces of metal on the water,” Zulkifli, a security official, told CNNIndonesia.com.

Nurhasan, a fisherman in the area known as Thousand Islands, told local media that he and his crew had found several pieces of metal.

Nonetheless, experts say planes such as Sriwijaya’s leased 737-500 are being phased out for newer fuel-saving models. Civil jets typically have an economic life of 25 years, meaning they become too expensive to keep flying beyond that compared to younger models, but they are built to last longer.