Indonesia loses contact with a commercial plane over the Java Sea

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Indonesian aviation authorities lost contact with a Sriwijaya airline airliner with 56 passengers on board a few minutes after taking off when it was flying over the ocean. Contact was lost with a Sriwajaya aircraft during its route from Jakarta to Pontianak with the calling code SJY 182. The last contact was at 14:40 (local time, 6:40 GMT) ... More information will be provided as it comes to us, Adita Irawati, a spokesperson for the Indonesian Ministry of Transport, said in a statement. Boeing 737-524, 13 minutes after it took off from the Soekarno-Hatta International Airport in the Indonesian capital, bound for Pontianak, capital of West Kalimantan, as it flew over the sea off the coast of Jakarta and after it lost altitude rapidly. At the moment, the Indonesian search and rescue agency, Basarna, has already sent a team to the area, reports local Kompas. Meanwhile, the governor of the Seribu Islands, near the point where contact with the device was lost, declared that the inhabitants of the place had heard an explosion at the same time, according to statements by the local portal Detik. For their part, nearby fishermen told local media that they had witnessed an explosion and found the possible remains of a plane crash floating in the sea that the authorities have not yet confirmed. In images shown by the local KompasTV portal, several fishermen who were fishing in the area of ​​the possible accident showed cables and other equipment that they had found in the vicinity of the place where the plane's trace was lost. There were 56 passengers on the plane , including three babies and seven minors, and six crew members, according to the flight manifest, to which Efe has had access.