The Indonesian rescue teams managed to locate this Sunday the remains of the commercial plane of the Sriwajaya airline that fell into the sea on Saturday with 62 people on board a few minutes after taking off from Jakarta, after finding the first human remains and locating a sign of the aircraft.
“ Thanks to God and to the prayers of the Indonesian people we have found the point where the (plane) SJ fell 182 and right now the soldiers of the Armed Forces, especially the Navy, are helping Basarnas (the Indonesian search and rescue agency) to recover the remains of the device, ”said Bagus Puruhito, head of Basarnas in a press conference in Jakarta.
Throughout the day, rescue teams from various coordinated agencies delivered a total of five bags with human remains to the authorities and three with remains of the device , as reported by the authorities.
The location On of the drop point, which has not yet been made public but is presumably a few kilometers off the coast of Jakarta, occurred after a signal from the plane was detected in the morning, which It is believed that it corresponds to its black box, according to Soerjanto Tjahjono, head of the National Committee for Transportation and Safety (KNKT, Indonesian acronym).
UNKNOWN CAUSES OF EVENT The plane, a Boeing 737 – 524 registered in 1994, crashed in the Java Sea after taking off from Sukarno-Hatta International Airport , in the Indonesian capital, bound for Pontianak, capital of West Borneo, as confirmed by Basarnas.
At first, the authorities announced on Saturday afternoon that had lost contact with the device at 14. 29 (local time, 6. 40 GMT), about thirteen minutes later takeoff and without the Emergency Locator Transmitter (ELT) having issued any warning.
At that time, the plane had abruptly changed direction, prompting the control tower to ask to the pilots what was happening when it suddenly disappeared from the radar, as explained on Saturday night by the Indonesian Minister of Transport, Budi Karya Sumadi, at a press conference.
At the moment, the causes of the accident on the plane in which they were traveling are unknown 50 passengers, including three babies and seven other minors, and twelve crew members, all of them Indonesian nationality, according to the flight manifest to which Efe had access and information from the authorities.
FAMILY MEMBERS COME IN SEARCH OF ANSWERS Late on Saturday, the Police reported that they had installed an identification post of corpses in an East Jakarta hospital where will attend the families and relatives of the victims, according to the local portal Detik.
Throughout Sunday, 79 relatives of the passage and the crew went to the hospital, to which DNA tests were carried out to compare them with the human remains s that are being found, indicated the Suara portal .com.
“Basically, we think Diego is going to survive. It must be safe. Since God is kind and Diego is a good person who loves his family. In this very second we believe that he is still safe, ”a relative of the copilot of the plane told the Indonesian channel Metro TV who went to the hospital to offer samples of his DNA.
CONDOLENCES FROM THE PRESIDENT For his part, the President of Indonesia, Joko Widodo, expressed his condolences for the plane tragedy and said he was closely following the operations search and rescue, in a statement published this Sunday.
“ My prayers and my sympathy go out to the families and relatives of the passengers and the crew. Hopefully they receive patience and strength “, the president wrote on his Twitter account.
Widodo also noted that he has given orders to the National Committee for Transportation and Security (KNKT, acronym in Indonesian) to carry out an investigation into the accident.
LONG LOSS HISTORY The Sriwajaya plane crash is the latest in a long history of air accidents in the vast Indonesian archipelago and has affected to the third airline in the country and, again, to a model of the American manufacturer Boeing.
The 29 October 2018, a Boeing 737 Max 8 of the low-cost airline Lion Air crashed in the waters of the Java Sea within minutes of taking off from Jakarta after the pilots had difficulties with the controls of the plane, an accident similar to the one that happened a few months later with the same model operated by Ethiopian Airlines .
The worst accident in the history of Indonesian aviation occurred in September 1997, when an Airbus of the Garuda flag carrier crashed in the north of the island of Sumatra, resulting in the death of the 234 people who were traveling on board.
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