Lion Air plane crashes in Indonesia

Lion Air announced Wednesday it had fired its technical director, two days after one of its flights crashed into Indonesian waters.

The airline gave no reason for the personnel change but said in a news release it was made at “the instruction and the decision of the (Indonesian) transportation ministry.”

An Indonesian red cross member stands in front of recovered personal items from Lion Air flight JT 610 at the Tanjung Priok port on Tuesday in Jakarta.

A group of 100 divers in the operation to find the remains of the downed Lion Air flight are focusing their efforts on five locations where debris has been identified by sonar equipment, according to Didi Hamzar, an official with Indonesia’s search and rescue agency.

Some that could be part of the fuselage, Hamar said.

A Lion Air passenger jet of the Boeing 737 MAX 8 series -- the type of jet that crashed -- is seen Monday at the Jakarta Airport.

A team of Boeing investigators arrived in Indonesia Wednesday at the request of Indonesia’s local regulatory authority, Boeing press officer Kevin Yoo told CNN.

The aircraft is one of the company’s newest and most advanced jets, one of 11 such planes in Lion Air’s fleet. In a statement, Boeing said the company was “deeply saddened” by the loss and offered “heartfelt sympathies” to passengers and crew on board, and their families.

Indonesian aviation authorities ordered the inspection of 12 other Boeing 737 MAX 8 aircrafts belonging to commercial airlines in the country.

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Indonesian police prepare to carry body bags containing remains of a passenger as they recover bodies and personal items from Lion Air flight JT 610 at the Tanjung Priok port Tuesday in Jakarta.

A total of 49 bodybags have been collected by authorities and sent for identification, Indonesian rescue authorities said Wednesday.

Officials caution that there may be more than one set of remains per bag and have previously warned that not all of the 189 passengers and crew on board the downed Lion Air flight may be recovered.

Ambulances sit lined up to transfer recovered victims of the ill-fated Lion Air flight JT 610 as debris collected at sea sits out to dry, at the Jakarta International Container Terminal in Jakarta.

Indonesian investigators searching for the flight recorders of crashed Lion Air flight 610 have heard transponder “pings” that could lead them to the devices, and answer questions as to why the new Boeing 737 MAX 8 went down, killing all 189 people on board.

Haryo Satmiko, deputy director of the National Transport Safety Committee, told CNN in a text message that, while the pings had been detected, investigators needed more “technical efforts” to find the exact location of the so-called black boxes.

Small pieces of debris and remains of some people on board the plane have been retrieved from the water off Jakarta, but the main body of the plane has been missing since it disappeared from radar on Monday around 6:30 a.m. local time.

Read more about the latest developments in the search for the crashed airliner here.

Indonesian aviation authorities will inspect all Boeing 737 Max 8 planes belonging to the country’s commercial airlines, Transportation Ministry official Captain Avirianto has told CNN.

Lion Air currently has 11 models in its fleet while Garuda Indonesia has one. Lion Air’s 12th 737 Max 8 was lost in a crash after takeoff Monday from Jakarta.

Avirianto said Garuda’s plane was inspected on Monday night. The ministry hoped to inspect at least three of Lion’s remaining aircraft Tuesday night and the other eight soon. “We will check list one by one, with its system and technical things,” he said.

Avirianto would not comment on the outcome of the Garuda inspection.

Search and rescue operations expanded to at least 400 square nautical miles, Didi Hamzar, Director of Preparedness for Indonesia’s search and rescue agency BASARNAS, told reporters Tuesday.

Didi said 35 ships and 50 divers were focused on 13 priority areas and that 26 body bags of remains had been collected in total. So far 812 personnel have been deployed to help in operations, including workers from government agencies, volunteers and teams from the Red Cross.

Search and rescue operations are expected to continue around the clock for the next three days.

BASARNAS Chief Muhammad Syauqi told reporters at a separate news conference Tuesday that search operations could be extended three days past the government’s standard seven days.

Inspector General Arthur Tampi, head of Indonesia’s National Police Health and Medical Department, said police are using DNA, finger prints and tooth samples to assist in identification – a process that should take four full days.

Officials confirmed Tuesday afternoon that the plane’s flight data recorder and main fuselage have yet to be found.

Indonesian President Joko Widodo joined search teams at Tanjung Priok port Tuesday, where remains and debris recovered from the crash site have been unloaded. 

More remains and debris were unloaded at the Tanjung Priok port late Tuesday afternoon local time, where Indonesia’s Transport Minister, Budi Karya Sumadi, joined search teams in examining the material. 

Family members are still waiting for news. Nuni Hesti, 53, told CNN she had lost both her son and grandson in the disaster. The pair – Wahyu Aldilla and Xherdan Fahrezi – had traveled to Jakarta to watch a football game over the weekend. 

David Soucie, a former safety inspector with the Federal Aviation Administration. said while is too early to determine the cause of the crash of the Lion Air flight, some things appear to be peculiar to him.

“What’s most peculiar to me is the fact that they didn’t declare an emergency. They just simply said, ‘we’re going back,’” said Soucie, who now works for CNN as an analyst.

Soucie said that declaration gives them priority to return to the airport.

“But when I look at the track of the aircraft after that, the aircraft made a very steep dive after that which is not typical of what they would’ve done,” he said.

“They would have maintained altitude and made that turn and come back to it.”

Boeing stock dropped 6.6% in a wild day of trading Monday. It fared far worse than the Dow Jones Industrial Average, which closed down 1%.

The Lion Air plane that crashed was a Boeing 737 MAX 8. But the aerospace giant’s share price was likely dragged down by more than just concerns about the incident.

Many stocks turned lower in the afternoon after Bloomberg reported that the White House is considering more tariffs on Chinese goods by December if the next round of negotiations between President Donald Trump and Chinese leader Xi Jinping do not go well.

Boeing has significant exposure to China.

Read more from CNN Business here

The Lion Air jet in Monday’s crash off Indonesia was a Boeing 737 MAX 8, one of the plane maker’s newest and most-advanced jets but one that had been grounded due to technical issues last year.

In 2017, Boeing temporarily grounded all 737 MAX planes over concerns about a manufacturing quality issue inside its new engines.

Jamie Jewell, a spokesperson for CFM, said at the time that the company’s inspections found “some anomalies in the process” of manufacturing disks for the jet’s turbine. Jewell also stressed that no problems related to the part were seen in the more than 2,000 hours of test flights for the 737 Max.

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A day after Indonesian Lion Air flight 610 crashed into the sea minutes after takeoff from the capital Jakarta, questions are being asked as to what caused the new Boeing jet to suddenly lose altitude, killing all 189 people on board.

Divers and rescue teams were working Tuesday to bring passenger remains out of the water, as investigators examined fragments of debris scattered over a large expanse of sea.

The aircraft’s fuselage and flight data recorders are yet to be recovered, which should provide more evidence as to what caused the flight to crash about 13 minutes after taking off on a routine flight expected to take just over one hour.

A day after Indonesian Lion Air flight 610 crashed into the sea minutes after takeoff from the capital Jakarta, questions are being asked as to what caused the new Boeing jet to suddenly lose altitude, killing all 189 people on board.

Divers and rescue teams were working Tuesday to bring passenger remains out of the water, as investigators examined fragments of debris scattered over a large expanse of sea.

The aircraft’s fuselage and flight data recorders are yet to be recovered, which should provide more evidence as to what caused the flight to crash about 13 minutes after taking off on a routine flight expected to take just over one hour.

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It is unlikely that the remains of all the passengers onboard the Lion Air flight that went down Monday will be found, Indonesian authorities said.

Muhammad Syaugi, an official with Indonesia’s National Search and Rescue Agency (BASARNAS), said at a news conference Tuesday that he has assured families that the identification process was moving as quickly as possible.

Aviation consultant and former pilot Alastair Rosenschein told CNN’s Becky Anderson that it’s unlikely we’ll know much about the cause of Monday’s Lion Air plane crash until authorities recover the the plane’s black boxes.

Rosenschein said it’s particularly important to find the black boxes quickly because the plane that crashed was a newer aircraft.

“What happened here could possibly affect the same model of aircraft flying in other parts of the world,” he said.

Until those boxes are found, it’s unlikely that authorities will be able to figure out what brought down the plane.

“It is almost impossible to say just what happened,” Rosenschein said. “At this point, some sort of mechanical failure is probably the most likely, but this is purely speculative.”

The crash of a Lion Air flight into the sea off the coast of Indonesia Monday is likely to bring renewed scrutiny to the country’s flight safety record.

Lion Air was one of the dozens of Indonesian carriers banned from European airspace in 2007, following a series of crashes and concerns over falling safety standards.

That same year, a Garuda Indonesia plane with 140 people on board overshot the runway in the Indonesian city of Yogyakarta and burst into flames, killing 21 people on board.

The crash was one of a litany of accidents involving Indonesian airlines since 2000, including several involving Lion Air.

However, standards have since improved and major carriers – including Lion Air – were gradually removed from the blacklist over the years. All remaining Indonesian airlines on the list were cleared earlier this year.

A similar ban, preventing Indonesian carriers from entering US airspace, was lifted in 2016.

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Indonesian authorities have recovered the body of a baby during their search for the Lion Air flight that went down Monday, the country’s Search and Rescue Agency (BASARNAS) said.

“I saw body parts there was a baby, adults for sure and and some items like shoes,” Deputy National Police Chief Ari Dono Sukmanto told reporters during a news conference Wednesday after visiting Kramat Jati Police Hospital, where remains are brought for identification.

Sukamto also said:

Sukmanto said the identification process will likely be quite difficult because so few bodies are intact. Dental records will likely be the most reliable, he said.

A total of 24 body bags from the crash site of Lion Air Flight JT 610 have been taken to the hospital for post mortem examination, according to Indonesian authorities.

During a news conference Monday night, Police Commissioner Musyafak said that each bag currently at the Kramat Jati Police hospital could contain remains of more than one person, so authorities are still unable to confirm the number of bodies that have been retrieved so far.

DNA samples have been taken from 132 family members of the passengers on board to help identify the remains. Musyafak warned that the identification process will be difficult. 

As many as 21 body bags that contain body parts, debris from the airplane, and items belonging to the victims of the Lion Air JT 610 crash have been taken to the joint command post at the Jakarta International Container Terminal, according Indonesia’s National Search and Rescue (SAR) agency.

All of the items were found near the crash site during a search operation Monday.

The bags will be taken to Kramat Jati Police Hospital in Jakarta for further identification.

Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau just tweeted about the Lion Air crash.

“Awful news from Indonesia this morning – Canada sends its deepest condolences to everyone who had a friend, loved one, or family member on board flight JT610,” he wrote.

Here’s his full message: