Sriwijaya air jet clashed

Investigators in Indonesia are seeking to uncover why a Sriwijaya Air jet crashed into the sea shortly after taking off on Jan. 9. The incident involving a Boeing 737-500 came more than two years after a Lion Air plane went down in the country resulting in 189 deaths.

The Sriwijaya Air jet crashed into the Java Sea minutes after it took off from Indonesia’s capital, Jakarta, on Jan. 9. It was carrying 62 people, including 10 children, on a domestic flight to Pontianak, a city on Indonesia’s Borneo island.

The plane departed at 2:36 p.m. and climbed to a maximum altitude of 10,900 feet about four minutes later before beginning a steep descent, according to aviation data provider Flightradar24. It went missing at 2:40 p.m.

Divers and search crew located debris from the plane and human remains around an area known as the Thousand Islands, to the north of Jakarta. There were no survivors.

Investigators are counting on the so-called black boxes of the Boeing 737-500 to help piece together what happened in the moments before the crash and determine why SJ182 went down. One black box—the flight-data recorder—has been pulled out of the sea.

What is known is that the plane made an unexpected turn in the northwest direction shortly after takeoff, prompting air-traffic controllers to ask the pilots why they were headed that way. Seconds later, the aircraft disappeared from the radar. Investigators are hoping to understand what caused the plane to change direction.

Avadoot Shah

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