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Monday, August 25, 2025

Indonesia's Sriwijaya Air plane feared to have crashed after taking off from Jakarta

by

NEWS DESK
1689 days ago
20210109
A Flightradar24 map shows the moment Sriwijaya Air flight SJY 182 lost contact on Saturday. (Image: CNN)

A Flightradar24 map shows the moment Sriwijaya Air flight SJY 182 lost contact on Saturday. (Image: CNN)

SOURCE: CNN

Jakar­ta, In­done­sia (CNN)—A Sri­wi­jaya Air plane car­ry­ing 62 peo­ple on board is feared to have crashed short­ly af­ter tak­ing off from Jakar­ta, ac­cord­ing to In­done­sia's Head Of Na­tion­al Trans­porta­tion Safe­ty Com­mit­tee, Suryan­to Cahy­ono.

Sri­wi­jaya Air flight 182 from Jakar­ta to Pon­tianak, in In­done­sian Bor­neo, lost con­tact at 2:40 p.m. West­ern In­done­sian Time (2:40 a.m. ET) on Sat­ur­day.

Maj. Gen Bam­bang Suryo Aji of In­done­sia's search and res­cue agency, Basar­nas, told re­porters on Sat­ur­day that the plane is be­lieved to have crashed be­tween the is­lands of La­ki and Lan­cang, in the Thou­sand Is­lands chain north­west of the cap­i­tal, Jakar­ta. Basar­nas is now con­duct­ing a search op­er­a­tion.

The miss­ing In­done­sia plane was car­ry­ing 50 pas­sen­gers -- 43 adults and 7 chil­dren -- as well as 12 crew mem­bers, In­done­sia's Min­is­ter of Trans­porta­tion Bu­di Karya Suma­di said dur­ing a press con­fer­ence.

The In­done­sian Navy has de­ployed five war­ships and div­ing troops in the search, ac­cord­ing to Rear Ad­mi­ral Ab­dul Rasyid.

Ear­li­er on Sat­ur­day, a high-rank­ing Basar­nas of­fi­cer told re­porters their of­fi­cers on the ground had found de­bris around Lan­cang Is­land.

The de­bris will be passed to the Na­tion­al Trans­porta­tion Safe­ty Com­mit­tee to be in­ves­ti­gat­ed, he said, adding that is not con­firmed if that de­bris be­longs to the miss­ing plane.

Flight 182 lost con­tact 11 nau­ti­cal miles north of Jakar­ta's Soekarno--Hat­ta In­ter­na­tion­al Air­port at an al­ti­tude of 11,000 feet while climb­ing to 13,000 feet, of­fi­cials said.

The plane dropped 10,000 feet in less than a minute be­fore dis­ap­pear­ing from the radar, ac­cord­ing to the glob­al flight track­ing ser­vice Fligh­tradar24. The drop hap­pened about four min­utes af­ter take­off, it said.

Sri­wi­jaya Air­lines CEO Jef­fer­son Ir­win Jauwe­na said the plane was in good con­di­tion be­fore it took off.

"Of course we are very con­cerned about what hap­pened to us with SJ 182," he said at a press con­fer­ence on Sat­ur­day.

"We hope that your prayers can help the search process run smooth­ly. We hope all is well," Jauwe­na said.

In an ear­li­er state­ment, Sri­wi­jaya Air said that they were "in con­tact with var­i­ous re­lat­ed par­ties to get more de­tailed in­for­ma­tion" re­gard­ing the in­ci­dent and that they will "im­me­di­ate­ly is­sue an of­fi­cial state­ment" when more in­for­ma­tion was clear.

The Trans­port Min­istry said it is in­ves­ti­gat­ing and co­or­di­nat­ing with Basar­nas and the Na­tion­al Com­mit­tee for Trans­port Safe­ty.

Indonesian military stand guard at Soekarno-Hatta International Airport in Jakarta after Sriwijaya Air flight 182 lost contact on Saturday. (Image: CNN)

Indonesian military stand guard at Soekarno-Hatta International Airport in Jakarta after Sriwijaya Air flight 182 lost contact on Saturday. (Image: CNN)

The plane, reg­is­tered PK CLC, is a Boe­ing 737-500. The air­craft is 26 years old, ac­cord­ing to Fligh­tradar24.

A Boe­ing spokesper­son told CNN in a state­ment that they are "aware of me­dia re­ports from Jakar­ta, and are close­ly mon­i­tor­ing the sit­u­a­tion."

"We are work­ing to gath­er more in­for­ma­tion," they said.

Sri­wi­jaya Air, a low-cost air­line and In­done­sia's third largest car­ri­er, trans­ports more than 950,000 pas­sen­gers per month from its Jakar­ta hub to 53 des­ti­na­tions with­in In­done­sia and three re­gion­al coun­tries, ac­cord­ing to the com­pa­ny's web­site.

In June 2018, it was re­moved from the Eu­ro­pean Union's list of banned air car­ri­ers, 11 years af­ter it was placed on that list.

The in­ci­dent is the lat­est to rock In­done­sia's air­line in­dus­try, a sec­tor that, while grow­ing, con­tin­ues to be plagued by no­to­ri­ous­ly poor safe­ty stan­dards.

Relatives of passengers on board missing Sriwijaya Air flight 182 wait for news at the Supadio International Airport in Pontianak on Saturday. (Image: CNN)

Relatives of passengers on board missing Sriwijaya Air flight 182 wait for news at the Supadio International Airport in Pontianak on Saturday. (Image: CNN)

 

A wor­ry­ing record

 

In Oc­to­ber 2018, Li­on Air Flight 610 crashed in­to the Ja­va Sea in In­done­sia af­ter tak­ing off from Jakar­ta, killing all 189 peo­ple on board. The Boe­ing 737 Max 8 plane was sched­uled to make a one-hour jour­ney to Pangkal Pinang on the is­land of Bang­ka.

The im­prop­er de­sign and cer­ti­fi­ca­tion of the Boe­ing 737 Max 8 air­craft, cou­pled with an over­whelmed flight crew bat­tling a mal­func­tion­ing sys­tem they could not prop­er­ly iden­ti­fy, led to the crash, ac­cord­ing to an Oc­to­ber 2019 re­port by In­done­sian au­thor­i­ties.

In 2014, In­done­sian AirA­sia Flight 8501 claimed the lives of all 162 peo­ple on board af­ter crash­ing in­to the Ja­va Sea, while fly­ing from Surabaya to Sin­ga­pore.

And in the year be­fore that, Li­on Air was in­volved in two ac­ci­dents. A Boe­ing 737 missed the run­way on land­ing and crashed in­to the sea near Bali, forc­ing pas­sen­gers to swim or wade to safe­ty, while an­oth­er Boe­ing 737 col­lid­ed with a cow while touch­ing down at Jalalud­din Air­port in Goronta­lo on the is­land of Su­lawe­si.

In 2007, the Eu­ro­pean Union banned all 51 In­done­sian air­lines from its air­space af­ter a Garu­da In­done­sia plane with 140 peo­ple on board over­shot the run­way in Yo­gyakar­ta in March and burst in­to flames, killing 21 peo­ple on board.

Stan­dards have since im­proved, with all In­done­sian air­lines cleared from that black­list by June 2018.

In­done­sia, an arch­i­pel­ago na­tion of more than 13,000 is­lands, has seen a boom in do­mes­tic avi­a­tion in re­cent years, with pas­sen­ger traf­fic tripling be­tween 2005 and 2017, ac­cord­ing to Aus­tralian con­sul­tan­cy the CA­PA-Cen­ter for Avi­a­tion.

The coun­try of 270 mil­lion peo­ple re­ly heav­i­ly on air trans­port to com­mute be­tween is­lands across the arch­i­pel­ago, which stretch­es over more than 3,000 miles, around the same dis­tance be­tween Lon­don and New York.

Ja­malud­din Mas­rur re­port­ed from Jakar­ta. CNN's Mo­hammed Tawfeeq con­tributed to this re­port.


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