BANGKOK – Indonesia’s transport ministry said on Saturday it had lost contact with a passenger plane after taking off from the capital Jakarta and flying over the Java Sea.
The ministry said the last contact with the aircraft, Sriwijaya Air Flight 182, took place at 14:40 local time. The Boeing 737-524 was en route to the city of Pontianak on the island of Borneo. No information was immediately available on the number of people on board.
Just minutes after taking off, the 26-year-old lost more than 10,000 feet in less than 60 seconds in less than 60 seconds, according to Flightradar24.
The aviation industry in Indonesia, a developing country with thousands of islands, has long been plagued by trouble, with poor records and the rapid growth of airlines.
In 2018, Lion Air Flight 610 with 189 people on board plunged into the Java Sea after the antistall system of the 737 aircraft, designed by Boeing, broke down.
On the flight on Saturday, Sriwijaya Air said in a preliminary statement that “management is still communicating and investigating this matter and will issue an official statement immediately after the actual information is obtained.”
The country’s Aviation Safety Commission said it was ready and that the Minister of Transport was on his way to Jakarta International Airport.
“When we hear this kind of news, we get ready,” Ony Suryo Wibowo, an investigator with the Indonesian National Transportation Safety Committee, said on Saturday. “We collect all the information we can get.”