In Pictures: The Ill-fated Journey of Indonesia’s Sriwijaya Air Flight 182

Indonesian officials have spent the past three days dredging up bags, body parts and plane wreckage from the sea after a Sriwijaya Air Boeing 737 plane went down minutes after taking off from the capital Jakarta, the latest disaster to befall the country’s accident-riddled aviation industry.

Hopes have faded of finding any survivors from the 62 people on board, including seven children. The plane disappeared from flight radars just four minutes into its journey towards the city of Pontianak in West Kalimantan province on the island of Borneo.

In less than a minute, the passenger jet was thought to have plunged more than 10,000 feet, according to flight tracking website Flightradar24.com 

Fishermen in the area said they heard a “loud explosion” and later sighted objects resembling plane debris floating in waters surrounding the runway. Indonesian authorities and investigators later confirmed that the plane, with its body fully intact, had crashed into the sea. “The speed at which it hit the water was probably very high,” said Suryanto Cahyono, chief of Indonesia’s national transportation safety committee.

Commander Fajar Rohadi from the Indonesian navy said that human body parts had been retrieved. According to search and rescue officials, 26 bags, containing pieces of clothing and personal items believed to belong to the victims, have since been handed over for formal identification. 

Founded in 2003 and headquartered in Tangerang, a city bordering the capital Jakarta, local budget airline Sriwijaya Air saw massive, rapid growth of its domestic flight operations within Indonesia, the world’s largest island nation.

The loss of the Boeing 737 follows a 2018 accident with a Lion Air plane manufactured by the same company, a tragedy which killed 189 people in Indonesia and plunged Boeing into an international crisis.

The U.S. aerospace giant, which designs, manufactures and sells airplanes, rockets, satellites and missiles worldwide, was forced to take its 737 Max planes out of service following the Lion Air incident and a separate crash in Ethiopia, which came within five months of each other and together killed 346 people.

Flaws in the Max system’s automated flight software called MCAS was believed to have prompted the planes to nosedive after take-off. The Max was approved to fly again late last year.

However, the Sriwijaya plane was not the 737 Max model, but a much older plane.

It had been in service for 26 years, noted Indonesian aviation expert Arista Atmadjati, who said that its age would not have been a factor in the crash.

“These models are still being widely used in the U.S., Latin America, parts of Europe and Russia. The important thing is that its maintenance was not compromised,” Arista told VICE World News.

With a rise in budget flying challenging stringent safety checks and records, Indonesia was already dealing with a tarnished image for air travel long before Flight 182 went down.

“A plane crash will always raise concerns about a country’s aviation standards and public safety record - and Indonesia hasn’t been the model for aviation safety,” said Greg Waldron, Asia managing editor at online aerospace and aviation website Flight Global.

Waldron told VICE World News that while there had been efforts by the Indonesian authorities to improve the country’s reputation, the Sriwijaya Air crash “certainly wouldn’t help repair its global reputation,” especially at a time when the industry has taken a huge hit during the ongoing global pandemic. 

Arista Atmadjati said the Sriwijaya Air crash showed that the government needs apply for safeguards and checks “in terms of aircraft maintenance, granting permits to engineers, and conducting random inspections on the ground.”

Indonesian president Joko Widodo offered his condolences for the victims and families, urging the public to pray. “The Indonesian government and its people would like to express condolences on what has happened,” Widodo said on Sunday.

“We will now do our best to find and save the victims, and hope that they can be found.”

Reporting contributed by Rosa Folia