Plane with 188 on board in Jakarta

An Indonesian aircraft with at least 188 people on board crashed into the sea and sank soon after taking off from the capital, Jakarta.

JT610, JT610, and later they said that they had recovered from the crash site about 15km off the coast.

13 minutes after takeoff, and a tug boat leaving the capital port it fall.

"We do not know yet, there is no survivor," said Muhammed Syaugi.

"We hope, we pray, but we can not confirm."

These things have been found in waters about 30m to 35m deep, near the plane, an almost new Boeing 737 MAX 8, lost contact, he said.

"We are there, our vessels, to badist," Mr Syaugi said. "We are trying to dive down to find the wreck."

Ambulances were lined up at Karawang, on the east coast of Jakarta, and police were preparing rubber dinghies, a Reuters reporter said.

At least 23 government officials were on board the plane, which an air navigation spokesman said to have sought to turn back just before losing contact.

"Edward Sirait, chief executive of Lion Air Group, told Reuters.

"We are also confused about the why, since it was a new plane."

The air-fueled aircraft, which has been operating, has accumulated 11,000 hours of flying time.

The head of Indonesia's transport safety committee said it could not confirm the cause of the crash, which would have to wait until the recovery of the plane's black boxes, as the badpit voice recorder and data flight recorder are known.

"The plane is so modern, it transmits data from the plane, and that we will review too." But the most important is the blackbox, "said Soerjanto Tjahjono.

Safety experts say that accidents are caused by a combination of factors and only a single identifiable cause.

The weather at the time of the crash was clear, Mr Tjahjono said.

Investigators will focus on the badpit voice and data recorders and build up a picture of the brand-new plane's technical status, the condition and training of the crew and weather traffic recordings.

The effort to find the wreckage and retrieve the black boxes represents a major challenge for investigators in Indonesia, where an Air Asia jet crashed in the Java Sea in December 2015.

Under international rules, the US National Transportation Safety Board will automatically be involved in the crash, backed up by technical advisers from Boeing and the US-French engine maker CFM International, co-owned by General Electric and Safran.

Boeing was deeply saddened by the loss, it said in a statement.

"Boeing stands ready to provide technical badistance to the accident investigation," it said, adding that in accordance with international protocol, all inquiries should be directed to the Indonesias National Transportation Safety Committee.

The flight took off from Jakarta around 6.20am and was due to be landed in Pangkal Pinang, capital of the Bangka-Belitung tin mining region, at 7.20am, the Flightradar24 website showed.

Data from FlightRadar24 shows the first sign of something amiss was around two minutes into the flight, when the plane had reached 610m.

Then it goes down to more than 1,524m, where it stayed during most of the rest of the flight.

It began to gain momentum in the final moments and reaches 397m / ph before it was lost when it was at 1,113m.

Its last recorded position was 15km north of the Indonesian coast, according to a Google Maps reference of the last coordinates from Flightradar24.

The Boeing 737 MAX, an updated, more fuel-efficient version of the manufacturer's workhorse single-aisle jet.

Indonesia is one of the fastest-growing aviation markets, but its safety record is patchy.

"The industry has grown unabatedly," said Greg Waldron, Asia's Managing Editor of Industry's FlightGlobal publication, which keeps an accident database.

If it was not possible to fly, the Air Lion would crash as Indonesia's second-worst air disaster, after a Garuda Indonesia A300 crash in Medan that killed 214 people in 1997, he said.

Founded in 1999, Lion Air's only fatal accident was in 2004, when an MD-82 crashed upon landing at Solo City, killing 25 of the 163 on board, the Flight Safety Foundation's Aviation Safety Network says.