Indonesian transportation and safety officials are searching for voice and data recorders and other clues to determine the cause in the crash of Lion Air’s brand-new Boeing 737 MAX 8 jet, the first accident of its kind for the variant of the top-selling plane.
The plane crashed into the Java Sea 13 minutes after taking off from Jakarta, Lion Air said. There were 189 people on board the flight to Pangkal Pinang, according to Indonesia’s Transportation Ministry. Divers of the search-and-rescue agency were looking for passengers and the plane.
Government safety officials will search for cockpit voice and flight data recorders to help determine the cause of the crash. The pilot of Flight 610 asked to return to the airport after the plane took off,” Soerjanto Tjahjono, head of Indonesia’s transport safety committee, told reporters, according to Reuters.
The reason Lion Air Flight 610 went down is still unknown. Lion Air said in a statement that it had been using the new plane since Aug. 15.
Boeing, which made the 737 MAX 8 jet, said wreckage of the twin-engine, narrow-body plane has been detected and that it “stands ready to provide technical assistance to the accident investigation.” The company directed all other questions to the Indonesian transportation safety committee.
“We express our concern for those on board, and extend heartfelt sympathies to their families and loved ones,” Boeing said.
A spokeswoman for engine maker CFM International, a joint venture of General Electric and France’s Safran, said the plane was powered by its CFM LEAP 1B engines and that the company is also ready to assist both the Indonesian and U.S. National Transportation Safety Board.
Lion Air is one of Indonesia’s youngest and fastest-growing airlines, flying to dozens of domestic and international destinations. The airline is a major customer of Boeing. The privately-held airline’s CEO Edward Sirait told reporters that the plane had a technical problem on a previous flight from Denpasar to Jakarta but that it “had been resolved according to procedure,” according to Reuters. He said the airline has 11 aircraft of the same model and that the issue was limited to that one plane.
The incident draws attention to Lion Air’s safety record. The Aviation Safety Network, part of the Flight Safety Foundation, listed 10 incidents or accidents involving Lion Air’s planes since 2002. In 2013, one of its Boeing 737-800 jets missed the runway while landing on the resort island of Bali, crashing into the sea without causing any fatalities among the 108 people on board.
The European Union removed Lion Air from its air safety blacklist in June 2016.
—Reuters contributed to this report.
