This past Saturday, a tragic event occurred when the Sriwijaya Air Boeing 737-500 crashed merely four minutes after departing Soekarno-Hatta International Airport, Jakarta. Shortly after the crash, a military ship acquired the plane’s signal and sent divers to retrieve body parts, clothing, and wreckage from the crash site, in close proximity to the day-trip islands barely off the coast.
In order to search for the items, the divers had to go as deep as 23 meters below the surface of the water, according to Hadi Tjahjanto, Indonesia’s Military Chief.
The unfortunate plane was a passenger jet and was carrying 62 people, including the crew. All 62 people, including 10 children, died, leaving no survivors.
President Joko Widodo offered his condolences and urged the nation to pray so that any survivors can be found. Despite an extensive search being carried out, no survivors have been located so far.
Until now, around five body bags comprising wreckage have been recovered from the site. The wreckage also included a broken tire & wheel, life jackets, a child’s pink clothing, etc.
Beben Sofian, 59, and her husband Dan Razanah, 58, were on board the unfortunate flight.
The plane was taking passengers to Pontianak city, a place it would have reached in about 90 minutes, had the tragedy not occurred.
FlightRadar24 suggests that the jet had attained an altitude of almost 11,000 feet (equivalent to 3,350 meters) before witnessing a sudden drop to 250 feet. At that point, the flight’s contact with air traffic control was cut off.
As per the transport minister, it appeared as if the plane changed its trajectory right before losing its contact with the control tower.
Even though it is too early to determine a concrete cause of the crash, aviation analyst Gerry Soejatman has indicated that pilot error, poor weather, or a technical failure might be the factors that led said plane to lose control and crashing eventually. Once the black box is located, we might start getting some answers.
Sriwijaya Air has issued a statement in the wake of the tragedy, saying that the airline will carry out an investigation into communication failure. It doesn’t come as a shock since the aviation sector of Indonesia has had a history of deadly plane crashes in the recent past, hinting to the country’s aviation industry needs a complete overhaul to address and curb such crashes in the future.
