A passenger plane carrying 188 people crashed into the sea
off Jakarta, some minutes after take-off, on Monday morning
According to air tracking service Flightradar 24, the flight
JT610 operated by Lion Air, lost contact with the ground 13 minutes after
take-off. The jet was a Boeing 737 MAX 8, which can carry up to 200
passengers,.
“It has been confirmed that it has crashed,” Yusuf Latif, a
spokesman for the country’s search and rescue agency, said on Monday by text
message, when asked about the fate of the plane. A search and rescue effort has
been launched for the plane which departed Jakarta about 6.20 a.m. on Monday
and was scheduled to land at Pangkal Pinang at 7.20 a.m. Reports received at Tanjung Priok port in
North Jakarta indicated the remains of the plane had been spotted.
Indonesia’s disaster agency spokesman posted video of some
debris on Twitter. A vessel traffic
officer, Suyadi, told the Jakarta Post that he received a report from a tugboat
that identified a downed plane at 6.45 a.m. “At 7:15 a.m., the tugboat reported
it had approached the site and the crew saw the debris of a plane,” Suyadi told
the Post.
