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Speaking to CNN Tuesday, transportation ministry official Capt. Avirianto said Lion Air currently has 11 of the models in its fleet while national carrier Garuda Indonesia has one.
"We have inspected Garuda last night while Lion is still in progress," he said, adding that the ministry hopes to inspect Lion Air's planes Tuesday night and the other eight soon.
It is unclear whether the Garuda aircraft passed the inspection.
The managing director of the Lion Air Group, Daniel Putut Adi Kuncoro, confirmed to CNN that the transport ministry was carrying out the inspections. "We are waiting for their results," he said. "We will follow what the regulator tells us to do."
Search and rescue operations expanded to at least 400 square nautical miles Tuesday, with various working parts of the water and investigators examining fragments of debris scattered over a large expanse of sea.
The aircraft's fuselage and flight data recorders are yet to be recovered. They should provide more evidence about 13 minutes after taking care of the situation.
Indonesian President Joko Widodo joined search teams at Tanjung Priok port Tuesday, where remains and debris recovered from the crash site have been unloaded.
What we know
- The plane went down at around 6:30 am Monday, en route from Jakarta to Pangkal Pinang
- Indonesian authorities believe all 189 people on board were killed
- The so-called black box flight recorder has yet to be found
- Flight crew reported an issue, and repairs were carried out
Police said Tuesday that 24 body bags had been sent from the crash to a local hospital for post-mortems. DNA samples have been taken from the United States of America on the basis of identification, but the Jakarta police commissioner warned that the identification of the victims could be difficult.
At a news conference on Tuesday, Muhammad Syaugi of Indonesia's National Search and Rescue Agency said that it was possible to proceed, but said it was unlikely the remains of all passengers would be found.
Cause of crash remains a mystery
The plane, a new Boeing 737 MAX 8, was carrying 181 passengers, and bound for Pangkal Pinang on the Indonesian Island of Bangka.
It was 19 kilometers (12 miles) after takeoff, but did not indicate there was any emergency.
Sait, Yohanes Sirait, spokesman for AirNav Indonesia, told CNN.
David Soucie, a safety inspector with the US Federal Aviation Administration, said the fact that an emergency was not a cause for concern.
"What's more, they're just saying that they're just saying, 'We're going back,'" said Soucie, to CNN safety analyst.
"But when I look at the track of the aircraft after that, the aircraft made it very clear that they would have done so," he added. "They would have maintained altitude and made that turn back to the airport."
The Air Force Executive Officer Edward Sirait told local media.
AirNav Indonesia said it would have been given an emergency.
"Something happened to lose control of that aircraft," Soucie said.
He did not look forward to seeing Jakarta. "That says that something abrupt and very fast happened to the aircraft."
The recorder and the voice of the cockpit recorder – the so-called black boxes – have yet to be recovered, Skeptical warned that the locator transmitters are unreliable, and could undetectable, as they were with the missing Malaysia Airlines flight MH370.
"When that aircraft goes down, the first thing you find is those boxes, and if the signal that tells you they're not working properly, that's a big problem," he said. "It's still more of a systemic problem than it is a particular aircraft."
Black boxes provide information on the causes of the crash and final minutes of the flight.
New aircraft
Lion Air acquired the Boeing jet in August and it had flown only 800 hours, according to Indonesia's National Transport Safety Committee (NTSC).
Soucie said 800 hours was plenty of time to get this tried and true.
He added the MAX 8 was "the top of the line, it's one of the best you can buy …"
CNN aviation analyst Peter Goelz agreed that the loss of such a new aircraft was "highly unusual."
But because Lion Air is a pilot and co-pilot were experienced – 6,000 and 5,000 flight hours, respectively – and weather did not seem to be a factor, investigators would be focusing on the aircraft, said Goelz, a former chairman of the US National Transportation Safety Board.
'I have to be strong'
Agency staff are going through personal items recovered from the crash site, including passports, wallets and IDs. Images Hello Kitty Money with a child.
More remains and debris were unloaded at the Tanjung Priok port late Tuesday afternoon local time, where Indonesia's Transport Minister, Budi Karya Sumadi, joined the research teams in the material.
One family member, 14-year-old Keshia Aurelia, was in high school when she heard about her mother Fifi Hajanto had been on the plane when it went down.
"We cried a lot in the crisis center while we were waiting for the authorities," she told CNN. "All of the families were crying, I'm not only suffering so much."
"My mom was a very kind person," Aurelia added. "I do not understand why (this happened)."
Nunik Hesti, 53, lost both his son and grandson in the disaster. The pair – Wahyu Aldilla and Xherdan Fahrezi – had traveled to Jakarta to watch a game over the weekend.
"I saw the breaking news coverage of the plane crash," she said. "My heart sank, I just lost it."
Indonesia's poor safety record
Attention also has the general safety record of Indonesia's aviation industry, which has long been lagging behind.
In the wake of the crash, Lionel Air, a government official told CNN.
Lion Air was one of the dozens of Indonesian carriers banned from European airspace in 2007, following a series of crashes and concerns over falling safety standards.
A similar ban, preventing Indonesian carriers from entering US airspace, was lifted in 2016.
Soucie, who was involved in several of the results resulting in Indonesia being said, said the said, "the Indonesian government and their commitment to safety."
As of 2017, Lion Air, considered a budget carrier, controlled more than 50% of Indonesia's domestic market, according to CAPA.
"What they (Indonesian government) dealt with was a systemic issue," said Soucie. "They've come a long, long way."
CNN's Ivan Watson, Jo Shelley, Darran Simon, Edi Amin, Devianti Faridz, Sheena McKenzie and Sarah Faidell contributed to this report.
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