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A Boeing passenger jet carrying 62 people lost contact with air traffic controllers shortly after taking off from Indonesia’s capital of Jakarta on a domestic flight Saturday, officials said, and Reuters is reporting that debris suspected to be from the plane has been found in the sea nearby.
A Boeing 737 MAX on December 9, 2020. – More than 20 months after it was grounded following two … [+] deadly crashes, Boeing’s 737 MAX returned to the skies Wednesday with an incident-free commercial flight in Brazil, said AFP journalists on board. Low-cost airline Gol’s Flight 4104 from Sao Paulo arrived safely in the southern city of Porto Alegre about 70 minutes after take-off using the revamped jet, in a first that Boeing hopes will turn the page on a badly damaging crisis in the wake of the twin crashes. (Photo by SILVIO AVILA / AFP) (Photo by SILVIO AVILA/AFP via Getty Images) AFP via Getty Images Key Facts
Indonesian Transportation Ministry spokesperson Adita Irawati said Sriwijaya Air Flight SJ182 went missing over the Java Sea minutes after takeoff.
Irawati said 50 passengers and 12 crew were aboard the jet, a Boeing 737-500, which has a capacity of 130.
The plane was traveling to Pontianak, the capital of the Indonesian province of West Kalimantan, in what was expected to be a 90-minute flight.
FlightRadar24.com, an independent tracking service, tweeted that the plane “lost more than 10,000 feet of altitude in less than one minute, about 4 minutes after departure from Jakarta.”