Boeing with 62 passengers missing in Indonesia

A Boeing passenger jet carrying 62 people lost contact with air traffic controllers shortly after taking off from Indonesia’s capital of Jakarta on a domestic flight Saturday, Reuters reported adding that debris suspected to be from the plane has been found in the sea off the city.

Agus Haryono, an official with the country’s search and rescue agency Basarnas, told Reuters that suspected debris had been found in the waters off the city, but it “had not been confirmed that it came from the missing flight.”

Indonesian Transportation Ministry spokesperson Adita Irawati said Sriwijaya Air Flight SJ182 went missing over the Java Sea minutes after takeoff.

Fifty passengers and 12 crew were on board the jet, a Boeing 737-500, which has a capacity of 130, Irawati said.

The plane was traveling to Pontianak, the capital of the Indonesian province of West Kalimantan, in what was expected to be a 90-minute flight.

“The plane lost more than 10,000 feet of altitude in less than one minute, about 4 minutes after departure from Jakarta,” FlightRadar24.com, an independent tracking service tweeted.

Local media outlets have meanwhile reported that local fishermen spotted metal objects believed to be parts of a plane in the Thousand Islands, a chain of islands north of Jakarta, according to USA Today, and one fisherman told Kompas TV he had seen a fiery explosion.

Television footage meanwhile showed relatives and friends of people aboard the missing plane weeping, praying and hugging each other as they waited at airports in Jakarta and Pontianak.