Indonesia Plane Crash: All 189 Aboard Ill-fated Jet ‘Likely’ Dead, Says Search And Rescue Agency

Indian pilot Bhavye Suneja, who commanded the Boeing 737 MAX 8 aircraft, was killed in the plane crash, the Indian Embassy said.

Jakarta: All 189 passengers and crew aboard an ill-fated Indonesian plane, which into the sea and sank on Monday soon after taking off from Jakarta, were “likely” killed in the accident, AFP quoted country’s search and rescue agency which announced it had found human remains.

“My prediction is that nobody survived because the victims that we found, their bodies were no longer intact and it’s been hours so it is likely 189 people have died,” agency operational director Bambang Suryo Aji was quoted by AFP as saying.

The Lion Air plane flight JT610 en-route to Pangkalpinang crashed with 189 passengers and crew near Kerawang, 13 minutes after taking off from Jakarta Soekarno Hatta International Airport.

Indian pilot Bhavye Suneja, who commanded the Boeing 737 MAX 8 aircraft, was killed in the plane crash, the Indian Embassy said.

The 31-year-old captain has 6,000 flight hours and the co-pilot more than 5,000 flight hours, the statement said.

Data from FlightRadar24 showed the first sign of something going wrong with the plane in nearly two minutes into the flight, when it reached 2,000 feet.

It then descended more than 500 feet before climbing again to 5,000 feet, reaching to 5,450 feet before descending again.

The plane gained speed in the final moments and reached 345 knots before the connection was lost when it was at 3,650 feet.

The total flight time was 13 minutes before the plane carrying 188 people on board crashed into the sea.

The same flight a day earlier reached nearly 24,800 feet within 13 minutes into the flight, the data showed.

The Lion Air flight took off from Jakarta’s Soekarno-Hatta international airport at 6.20 a.m. After a short flight, it was due to arrive in Pangkal Pinang an hour later. But it lost contact at 6.33 a.m.

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

According to media reports, the aircraft had been in operation since August and was airworthy.