Jakarta:  Indonesia’s search and rescue agency said this morning a Lion Air passenger flight from Jakarta, the capital, to the city of Pangkal Pinang off the island of Sumatra, had crashed into the sea. There were 189 people on board.

“It has been confirmed that it has crashed,” Yusuf Latif, a spokesman for the agency, said by text message, when asked about the fate of  Lion Air plane.

Lion Air Flight JT610 took off around 6.20 am and was due to have landed in the capital of the Bangka-Belitung tin mining hub at 7.20 am, the flight tracking service showed. The plane, a Boeing 737 Max 8 model, lost contact with the air-traffic controller at 6.33 am, 13 minutes after taking off, the airport authorities said.

Indonesian investigators are examining debris of the flight which crashed into the sea off Jakarta. The Boeing was carrying 181 passengers, including one child and two infants, as well as six crew members and two pilots, when it disappeared from radar during a short flight from Jakarta to Pangkal Pinang, according to Indonesia’s National Search and Rescue Agency (SAR).

There were 20 Indonesian Ministry officials on board, who were returning to their posts in Pangkal Pinang after spending the weekend with their families in Jakarta for a public holiday. Debris, life vests and a cell phone have been discovered in the water two nautical miles from the coordinates given as the crash site, SAR officials said. The fuselage has not yet been located.

Boats, a helicopter and 250 rescuers, including divers, were working at the crash site, some 34 nautical miles off the coast near Jakarta in the Java Sea. The frogmen are searching in water up to 35 meters (114 feet) deep.

Images have been released by Indonesia Disaster Mitigation Agency showing officials examining what appears to be debris from the plane. Video shows an oil slick at the presumed site of the crash. Authorities said they are still trying to locate the Emergency Locator Transmitter which is currently not transmitting.

Reports from Jakarta said that a Delhi boy, Bhavye Suneja, was captain of the ill-fated plane. According to Suneja’s LinkedIn profile, he belongs to New Delhi and is associated with the airline since March 2011. Earlier, he was a trainee pilot with Emirates for three months. He had received his pilot licence from Bel Air International in 2009. Lion Air in a statement said Suneja had more than 6,000 flying hours, while the co-pilot had more than 5,000 hours of flying time.

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