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JAKARTA (Reuters): The Budi and Gauk fishermen left the house an hour before dawn on Monday and, with shrimp nets stowed away on their shallow teak boat, they headed for a clogged sea at off the northeast coast of Jakarta on a clear day.
At about the same time, on the other side of the Indonesian capital, passengers were checking in for the Lion Air JT610 flight.
Shortly after 6:30, their lives collided.
The Boeing 737 MAX 8 fell from the sky near the place where the two men were fishing about 15 km from the coast, first in silence, then with a deafening crash while he was throwing himself into the sea.
"You could feel the explosion of the shockwave in the water," said Gauk, who only has one name, telling the couple's story from the beach of the regency of Karawang.
The police are busy with rubber dinghies and ambulances lined up on the shore, but no one has claimed that any of the 189 people aboard the JT610 flight would be found alive.
Yusuf Latief, spokesman for the National Agency for Search and Rescue, said that there were probably no survivors. There was no word on any probable cause of the accident.
Relatives of passengers of JT610 flight from Lion Air, who crashed into the sea, are crying while waiting for the Halim Perdanakusuma International Airport in Jakarta on Monday. Photo: Reuters
Air transport is crucial in Indonesia, a vast archipelago of more than 17,000 islands spanning approximately 5,100 km from east to west. Although it is one of the fastest growing aviation markets in the world, it has been affected by air disasters.
Lion Air, a low-cost airline that dominates the domestic air travel market, has had more than a dozen accidents in nearly 20 years, but none has resulted in deaths since 2004.
The captain of the JT610 flight Monday connecting Jakarta to Pangkal Pinang, the main town of Bangka, an island lined with beaches off Sumatra, was Bhavye Suneja, a 31-year-old Indian citizen from New Delhi. He and an Italian passenger were the only foreigners known on board.
According to his Linkedin account, Suneja had been working for Lion Air since 2011, recording some 6,000 flight hours.
Just minutes after takeoff at 6:20, Suneja reported technical difficulties and obtained permission from ground officials to turn around. FlightRadar24 data show that the first sign of a problem was about two minutes after the start of the flight, while the plane had reached 610 meters.
Members of the Indonesian rescue team are transporting the bodies of the victims of a plane crash on Monday in the port of Tanjung Priok, Indonesia.
The aircraft dropped more than 152 meters, turned left and then started climbing again up to 1,500 meters. He gained momentum in the last moments before the data was lost while he was at 1,113 meters above sea level.
The Boeing 737 MAX 8 is Boeing's newest model, the world's best-selling 737 aircraft, and is a popular choice among low-cost airlines around the world.
Lion Air's plane was almost brand new. The flight took place for the first time on August 15th and the airline declared that it had been certified airworthy prior to Monday's flight by a Boeing engineer.
Debris from the crashed Air Lion aircraft float in the sea off the coast of Tanjung Pakis Karawang, Indonesia on Monday.
Lion Air General Manager Edward Sirait said on Monday that the plane had encountered an unspecified "technical problem" during its previous flight, which connected the Bali seaside island to Jakarta, but that had been "resolved in accordance with the procedure".
"We do not dare to say what the facts are, or are not yet," he told reporters. "We are also confused as to why, since it was a new plane."
At the Jakarta airport, passengers in tears waited for news: a mother urged her son, a toddler, to "wait and be brave", another told his crying daughter, " be patient, pray the best for Dad ".
However, the only news that was reported was debris and body debris found floating in the water around the accident site.
The photos published by the Search and Rescue Agency showed images of items belonging to passengers, including identity cards, a driver's license and a pair of children's shoes.
The father of the pilot Bhavye Suneja cries while he goes Monday to the airport of New Delhi, India. Photo: AP
One of the passengers was 22-year-old Deryl Fida Febrianto, who was married just two weeks ago and was traveling to Pangkal Pinang to work on a cruise ship.
His wife, 23 year old Lutfinani Eka Putri, said that her husband had sent her a message from the plane at 6:12 am, sending her a photo of the plane. At 6:15, he had stopped responding to his messages. They had grown up together, she told reporters, showing a picture of the smiling couple on their wedding day.
"When I saw the news, I matched the flight number with the photo of the ticket Deryl had sent," she said. "I immediately started crying." – Reuters
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