All 189 passengers and crew aboard a crashed Indonesian Lion Air jet were likely killed in the accident, rescue officials said yesterday, as they announced they had found human remains and would continue the grim search through the night.
The Boeing-737 MAX, which went into service just months ago, vanished from radar 13 minutes after taking off from Jakarta, plunging into the Java Sea moments after it had asked to return to the Indonesian capital.
Web sites that display flight data showed the plane speeding up as it suddenly lost altitude in the minutes before it disappeared, with authorities saying witnesses saw the jet plunge into the water.
Photo: Reuters
“My prediction is that nobody survived because the victims that we found, their bodies were no longer intact and it’s been hours so it is likely 189 people have died,” search and rescue agency operational director Bambang Suryo Aji told reporters.
About 40 divers are part of about 150 personnel at the scene, authorities said, with the plane wreckage about 30m to 40m deep in the water.
Earlier, video footage apparently filmed at the scene of the crash showed a slick of fuel on the surface of the water and pictures showed what appeared to be an emergency slide and bits of wreckage bearing Lion Air’s logo.
The carrier acknowledged that the jet had previously been grounded for unspecified repairs.
“It’s really a mystery what could have happened,” said Greg Waldron, Asia managing editor of industry publication Flightglobal.
“Hopefully they will be able to locate the [cockpit] voice data recorders,” he said.
The plane had been en route to Pangkal Pinang City, a jumping off point for beach-and-sun seeking tourists on nearby Belitung Island, when it dropped out of contact at about 6:30am.
One Italian national was aboard the plane, which was flown by an Indian pilot, the Indonesian Ministry of Transportation said.
Images filmed at Pangkal Pinang’s main airport showed families of passengers crying and hugging each other, with some calling out to god.
“This morning he called asking about our youngest son,” a sobbing Ermayati said, referring to her 45-year-old husband, Muhammed Syafii, who was on board.
The Indonesian National Transportation Safety Committee said there were 178 adult passengers, one child, two infants, two pilots and six cabin crew on board flight JT610.
About 20 Ministry of Finance employees were on the plane, including half a dozen colleagues of Sony Setiawan who missed check-in for a flight he took weekly due to bad traffic.
Setiawan said he was only informed about his lucky escape after he arrived in Pangkal Pinang on another flight.
Lion Air said the plane had only gone into service in August.
The pilot and copilot had more than 11,000 hours of flying time between them and had recent medical checkups and drug tests, it added.
Lion Air chief executive Edward Sirait said the plane had an unspecified technical issue fixed in Bali before it was flown back to Jakarta.
“Engineers in Jakarta received notes and did another repair before it took off” yesterday, Sirait said, calling it “normal procedure.”
AIR SUPPORT: The Ministry of National Defense thanked the US for the delivery, adding that it was an indicator of the White House’s commitment to the Taiwan Relations Act Deputy Minister of National Defense Po Horng-huei (柏鴻輝) and Representative to the US Alexander Yui on Friday attended a delivery ceremony for the first of Taiwan’s long-awaited 66 F-16C/D Block 70 jets at a Lockheed Martin Corp factory in Greenville, South Carolina. “We are so proud to be the global home of the F-16 and to support Taiwan’s air defense capabilities,” US Representative William Timmons wrote on X, alongside a photograph of Taiwanese and US officials at the event. The F-16C/D Block 70 jets Taiwan ordered have the same capabilities as aircraft that had been upgraded to F-16Vs. The batch of Lockheed Martin
GRIDLOCK: The National Fire Agency’s Special Search and Rescue team is on standby to travel to the countries to help out with the rescue effort A powerful earthquake rocked Myanmar and neighboring Thailand yesterday, killing at least three people in Bangkok and burying dozens when a high-rise building under construction collapsed. Footage shared on social media from Myanmar’s second-largest city showed widespread destruction, raising fears that many were trapped under the rubble or killed. The magnitude 7.7 earthquake, with an epicenter near Mandalay in Myanmar, struck at midday and was followed by a strong magnitude 6.4 aftershock. The extent of death, injury and destruction — especially in Myanmar, which is embroiled in a civil war and where information is tightly controlled at the best of times —
Taiwan was ranked the fourth-safest country in the world with a score of 82.9, trailing only Andorra, the United Arab Emirates and Qatar in Numbeo’s Safety Index by Country report. Taiwan’s score improved by 0.1 points compared with last year’s mid-year report, which had Taiwan fourth with a score of 82.8. However, both scores were lower than in last year’s first review, when Taiwan scored 83.3, and are a long way from when Taiwan was named the second-safest country in the world in 2021, scoring 84.8. Taiwan ranked higher than Singapore in ninth with a score of 77.4 and Japan in 10th with
SECURITY RISK: If there is a conflict between China and Taiwan, ‘there would likely be significant consequences to global economic and security interests,’ it said China remains the top military and cyber threat to the US and continues to make progress on capabilities to seize Taiwan, a report by US intelligence agencies said on Tuesday. The report provides an overview of the “collective insights” of top US intelligence agencies about the security threats to the US posed by foreign nations and criminal organizations. In its Annual Threat Assessment, the agencies divided threats facing the US into two broad categories, “nonstate transnational criminals and terrorists” and “major state actors,” with China, Russia, Iran and North Korea named. Of those countries, “China presents the most comprehensive and robust military threat
RSS