Jakarta: Indonesian divers have located parts of the wreckage of a Boeing 737-500 in the Java Sea, as rescuers pulled out body parts, pieces of clothing and scraps of metal from the area where the Siriwijaya Air Flight 182 carrying 62 people is thought to have crashed.
A military vessel “found the signal from” the aircraft on Sunday and divers recovered parts of the plane from around 23 metres (75 feet) below the water’s surface, the transport ministry said in a statement, citing Indonesia’s military chief.
Hadi Tjahjanto said the objects recovered included broken pieces of fuselage with aircraft registration parts.
“We are sure that is the point where the plane crashed,” he said in the statement, expressing hope that weather conditions and “the view under the sea are still good so that we can continue the search” on Sunday afternoon.
The break in the search for Sriwijaya Air Flight 182 came after sonar equipment on a navy ship detected a signal from the aircraft at a location that fit the coordinates from the last contact made by the pilots before the plane went missing on Saturday afternoon.
The plane headed to Pontianak in West Kalimantan crashed shortly after takeoff from the Indonesian capital, Jakarta.
It’s still unclear what caused the crash. There was no sign of survivors.
