Daily Times

Indonesian airline plane carrying more than 50 passengers — 43 adults and 7 children — and 12 crew members, lost contact shortly after taking off from Indonesian capital Jakarta on Saturday. The plane dropped off the radar somewhere above the Java Sea.

According to a reliable flight tracking service FlightRadar24, Sriwijaya Air SJ182 en route to Pontianak on the island of Borneo, “lost more than 10,000 feet of altitude in less than one minute, about 4 minutes after departure from Jakarta”.

Local government officials fear that the 27-year-old Boeing 737-500 aircraft crashed into waters north of Jakarta, as fishermen found what appeared to be the debris of an aircraft. Indonesian media shared pictures of suspected wreckage, as a search operation was underway.

A security official named Zulkifli told CNNIndonesia.com, “We found some cables, a piece of jeans, and pieces of metal on the water.”

While it is not confirmed that the wreckage debris belongs to the missing aircraft, a local fisherman, Solihin, informed BBC’s Indonesia that he witnessed a plane crash from his boat, due to which his captain decided to return to land. “The plane fell like lightning into the sea and exploded in the water,” he told BBC. “It was pretty close to us, the shards of a kind of plywood almost hit my ship.”
Indonesian TV channels show footage of families of people aboard the flight waiting for their loved ones at Jakarta and Pontianak airports, praying and weeping.