A mother and her children send a final goodbye message while boarding on the ill-fated Indonesian plane, which crashed with 62 people on board.
As Daily Mail reports, heartbreaking final messages of passengers on the doomed flight have been revealed. The Indonesian plane crashed into the sea with dozens of people on board. While investigating, authorities have found two black boxes on the plane.
On Saturday, January 9, Sriwijaya Air Flight 182 took off from Soekarno-Hatta international airport. What was expected to be a routine 90-minute flight over the Java Sea between Jakarta and Pofntianak in West Kalimantan turned into a tragedy.
Suddenly, at 2:40 pm, only four minutes after takeoff, the aircraft dropped 10,000ft in less than a minute. At this point, the Boeing B737-500 disappeared from the radar.
According to the head of Indonesia’s transport safety agency, Soerjanto Tjahjanto, rescuers have located two black boxes in the sea. Divers are presently trying to retrieve the boxes containing valuable data about the passengers.
Heartbreaking final messages and social media posts shared from the passengers minutes before the crash have been revealed.
Ratih Windania, who was on the plane with her two children, posted a touching selfie with them as the family was boarding on the plane from Jakarta. She captioned the photograph:
“Bye bye family. We’re heading home for now.”
Windania’s brother, Irfansyah Riyanto, shared a picture of the family on Instagram with the caption: “Pray for us”
According to Riyanto, his family was supposed to take another plane, but they changed flights at the last minute. Hoping he would hear his family, including his sister with her children, and his parents, survived the crash, he rushed to Jakarta’s Soekarno Hatta airport as soon as he heard the tragic news. The petrified man told reporters:
“We feel powerless, we can only wait and hope to have any information soon.”
Explaining why his sister, Ratih, and her two kids were on the doomed flight, Riyanto said they were going home from a holiday. He also shared he was the one who gave them a lift to the airport and helped them during the check-in process. He added:
“I feel like I still can’t believe this and it happened too fast.”
Police are asking the families of the passengers to provide information to help identify the victims.
Chris Mamahit, brother of co-pilot Diego Mamahit, said he was asked to give a blood sample to help the investigators recognize his brother. However, Chris still believes Diego is alive:
“I believe my younger brother survived, these are just for the police procedure. Diego is a good man, we still believe Diego survived.”
Diego Mamahit and pilot Afwan had almost 20 years of commercial flying experience between them. The pilot has previously been an air force pilot. One of his family members told Detik.com that they are still hoping “for good news.”
Another passenger – Panca Widiya Nursanti, a middle-school teacher in Pontianak, had been returning to her Central Java home after a holiday. Nursanti’s husband, Rafiq Yusuf Al Idrus, said the last conversation they had was filled with laughter.
“I was joking by saying that when she arrived in Pontianak we would eat satay together. She contacted me via Whatsapp at 2.05 p.m with laughter. She was already boarding the plane and she said the weather conditions were not good.
I said pray a lot, please.“
On Sunday, President Joko Widodo offered his sympathy to the families of the victims.
The Indonesian president stated:
“We are making our best efforts to find and rescue the victims and we all pray that they can be found.”
Additionally, Transportation Minister Budi Karya Sumadi noted that officials have launched a broad search for the crashed plane. Sumadi also marked that they have narrowed down “the possible location” of the Boeing 737-500.
As the National Search and Rescue Agency Bagus Puruhito reveals, pieces of the aircraft were found between Lancang Island and Laki Island.
Indonesian military chief Air Chief Marshal Hadi Tjahjanto said:
“We have immediately deployed our divers from navy’s elite unit to determine the finding to evacuate the victims.”
Captain EKo Surya Hadi, commander of a local lifeboat, added:
“We found body parts, life jackets, avtur (aviation turbine fuel) and debris of the plane.”
Witnesses report seeing the plane crash into the sea.
According to the residents on a nearby island, there were two explosions. As per the BBC, fisherman Solihin had seen a crash, and his captain decided to return to land. He explained:
“The plane fell like lightning into the sea and exploded in the water. It was pretty close to us, the shards of a kind of plywood almost hit my ship.”
The Boeing 737-500 was a 26-year-old plane. As Minister Sumadi recalls, the flight had a one-hour delay before taking off at 2:36 pm. Tragically, it disappeared from the radar within minutes. Flight Radar 24 reports that the last signal from the Sriwijaya Air Flight SJ182 was received at 07:40 UTC(2:40 pm local time).
