Missing Indonesia flight likely to have crashed with 62 passengers on board - Reports

An Indonesian Sriwijaya Air plane is feared to have crashed into the sea after the Boeing 737 lost contact with air traffic control in the capital Jakarta, with flight tracking data showing the jet plunged into a steep dive just four minutes after take-off. It was unclear how many passengers and crew were aboard Sriwijaya Air's Boeing 737-500, which has a capacity of about 130, when it left Jakarta's Soekarno-Hatta international airport. But 62 passengers and crew were listed on an unconfirmed manifest, including seven children and three infants, local media reported. 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.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. It was raining at Soekarno-Hatta International Airport when the plane took off for Pontianak, around 740 km (460 miles) away. Video images from the airport showed pictures of relatives of the passengers in tears as they awaited news of what had happened.