Indonesia Sriwijara 737 Airplane Crash Raises Questions!

                                                                 No. Not Again.

 “Oh my god! No! Not again!”    

That was my reaction to the early morning BBC Asia report, on Saturday, January 9, 2021, that, yet another Boeing 737 passenger plane was “believed to have crashed into the sea shortly after take off from Indonesia’s capital Jakarta.”

However, the aircraft is not a 737 Max, the Boeing model that was grounded from March 2019 until last December following two deadly crashes.

In October 2018, a Lion Air flight plunged into the sea just after it took off from Jakarta. All 189 people on board perished. Why did the plane crash? There were said to be several reasons including failures in the design of the plane, faults by the airline and by the pilots. This plane went missing about 12 miles north of Jakarta “not far from where another flight crashed in October 2018.” the BBC report said.

The Sriwijara Airplane disappeared four minutes after takeoff.

The aircraft could carry 130 people, but on board this plane were only 50 passengers including 7 children 3 babies and 12 crew members.

The call sign of the plane was SJY 182. The last contact made with it was at 07:40 GMT (14:40 local time)

The plane did not send a distress signal according to the head of the national search and rescue agency.

The flight tracking website Flightradar24.com said the plane lost more than 10,000 feet (3,000m) in altitude in less than a minute. Witnesses said they heard an explosion.

Solihin, an Indonesian fisherman told the BBC. Indonesian service that he witnessed a crash. “The plane fell like lightening into the sea, and then exploded in the water,” he said. “It was pretty close to us,” he added. So close, in fact, that the captain of the vessel on which he was decided to return to land.

 As I write this story search and rescue efforts are underway, and the navy has been ordered to look for the aircraft. Ships are also assisting in the search.

Mr. Naman Zai was one of the many people waiting in West Kalimantan to meet their family – his wife and daughters - who were on the flight. He will not see them again, - never, ever. he told Yahoo News.

Theo Leggett, BBC Business correspondent commented that Indonesia has a relatively poor record on aviation safety. The plane that crashed was 26 years old. It was “seen as a workhorse aircraft for many years.”

“While airlines do tend to prefer to fly newer aircraft - because they have lower running costs - it is not uncommon to find planes of this age still in service,” he said. For more than a decade, however, planes from the region were banned from flying into the EU.

“Until recently the perception had been that standards were improving and in 2018 all Indonesian airlines were removed from the EU’s blacklist.”

That, Leggett wrote, was before the loss of Lion Air 737 Max in October 2018. “Although the design of the aircraft is widely believed to be the main cause of the accident, investigators also highlighted issues such as poor maintenance procedures and inadequate flying skills as contributory factors.”