Lion Air plane crash: In a shocking incident, a Lion Air Boeing 737 passenger plane came down crashing minutes after taking off from Jakarta on Monday. With reportedly 189 passengers on board, the plane went missing 13 minutes after it took off. Later it was learnt that the flight has crashed into the sea. The scheduled Flight JT-610 was headed to Pangkal Pinang, the main city in the Bangka Belitung Islands from the Indonesian capital. Delhi-based man, Bhavye Suneja, was the captain on the ill-fated Indonesian carrier Lion Air's Boeing 737 Max. LionAir in a statement said Suneja had more than 6,000 flying hours, while the co-pilot Harvino, an Indonesian, had amassed more than 5,000 hours of flying time.



Confirming the news, the Indonesian authorities said that the Lion Air plane took off at 6.20 am (local time) and subsequently lost its contact with air traffic controllers at 6.33 am as it was crossing the sea, The Straits Times reported. A spokesperson for Indonesia's search and rescue agency, Yusuf Latif, said, “It has been confirmed that it has crashed.”

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At 6.45 am a vessel traffic service officer, Suyadi, received a report from a tugboat, AS Jaya II, that the crew had seen the debris of a plane, The Jakarta Post reported. They suspected it to be the Lion Air flight floating near Tanjung Bungin in Karawang in West Java. Suyadi was further quoted as saying that at 7.15 am the tugboat reported it had approached the site and the crew saw the debris of a plane. As of 9 am there was no report about the passengers or the plane crew on board, he added.

The aircraft was reported to be a Boeing 737 MAX 8, a model only in use since 2016.