Indonesian low-cost carrier Sriwijaya Air has confirmed that Flight SJY 182 from Jakarta to Pontianak crashed shortly after take-off on Saturday, January 9, 11 nautical miles north of Jakarta’s Soekarno-Hatta International Airport.
Debris from the aircraft including a plane registration number, wheels from the landing gear, and life vests, together with body parts have been found, while the aircrafts two ‘black boxes’, the flight data recorder and cockpit voice recorder, have also been located. The plane, a 26-year-old Boeing 737-500, dropped 10,000 feet in altitude in less than one minute before crashing into the sea four minutes after take-off, according to flight tracking data from Flightradar24. The aircraft did not send a distress signal, the head of national search and rescue agency Air Marshal Bagus Puruhito confirmed.
On board were 40 adult passengers, seven children, three babies, and 12 crew members according to Indonesia’s Minister of Transportation Budi Karya Sumadi. National Transportation Safety Committee (KNKT) teams have begun an investigation into the cause of the crash. According to the company’s website, 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.
In June 2018, the carrier was removed from the European Union’s list of banned air carriers, 11 years after it was placed on that list. 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 and burst into flames, killing 21 people on board.
