The Indonesian Navy has found the site where a plane crashed into the sea shortly after taking off from the capital Jakarta Saturday.
The Sriwijaya Air passenger jet was carrying 62 people when it vanished.
The Navy deployed a dozen vessels, including five warships and is sending divers to the area, CNN reported. No radio beacon signal was yet detected.
The Boeing 737-500 took off from Jakarta at 2:36 p.m. local time and lost contact with the air traffic controllers at 2:40 p.m.on the domestic flight, Transportation Minister Budi Karya Sumadi said. The flight was delayed for an hour on the ground.
The cause of the delay was unclear. It was raining at the time.
Tracking service Flightradar24 said on Twitter that Flight SJ182 “lost more than 10,000 feet of altitude in less than one minute, about 4 minutes after departure from Jakarta.”
Indonesian television channels showed pictures of suspected wreckage in the water.
“We found some cables, a piece of jeans, and pieces of metal on the water,” one security official told the local CNN affiliate.
A fisherman in the area known as Thousand Islands, told local media that he and his crew had found several pieces of metal and clothes that were turned over to authorities.
The airline, which mostly flies domestically, said the 26-year-old plane was on an estimated 90-minute flight from Jakarta to Pontianak, the capital of West Kalimantan province on Indonesia’s Borneo island. Most of the flight would have been over the Java Sea. Sriwijaya Ai, founded in 2003, has never had a crash before.
Boeing said on its Twitter feed the company is closely monitoring the news and working to gather more information.The plane, the world’s most common jet, was much older than the problem-plagued 737 MAX, which was involved in two crashes, including one in Indonesia, before it was pulled from the sky. Boeing on Friday announced a $2.5 billion settlement over the 737 MAX.
There were 50 passengers and 12 crew members onboard, all Indonesian nationals.
With Post wires