KQ flight makes history as another flight crashes into the sea with 188 on board

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Just when an East African country was launching the first direct flight to New York , the first in history a Malaysian brand-new aircraft that had only been in use for a couple of months went crashing into the sea claiming hundreds of life.

A latetest incidence   that has shocked the aviation industry.

An aircraft with 189 people on board is believed to have sunk after crashing into the sea off Indonesia’s island of Java on Monday, shortly after takeoff from the capital on its way to the country’s tin-mining hub, officials said.

The Boeing 737 MAX 8, a brand new type of aircraft  lost contact with ground control a few minutes after take-off, and was last tracked crossing the sea – it is unclear if there are any survivors.

“It has been confirmed that it has crashed,” the spokesman, Yusuf Latif, said by text message, when asked about the fate of the plane, which air tracking service Flightradar 24 identified as a Boeing 737 MAX 8.

Debris thought to be from the plane, including aircraft seats, was found near an offshore refining facility in the Java Sea, an official of state energy firm Pertamina said.

Wreckage had been found near where the plane lost contact with air traffic officials on the ground, said Muhammad Syaugi, the head of the search and rescue agency.

Map showing the timings of electronic handshakes with flight MH370

“We don’t know yet whether there are any survivors,” Syaugi told a news conference, adding that no distress signal had been received from the aircraft’s emergency locator transmitter.

“We hope, we pray, but we cannot confirm.”

An official of Indonesia’s safety transport committee said he could not confirm the cause of the crash, which would have to wait until the recovery of the plane’s black boxes, as the cockpit voice recorder and data flight recorder are known.

“We will collect all data from the control tower,” said Soerjanto Tjahjono. “The plane is so modern, it transmits data from the plane and that we will review too. But the most important is the black box.”

Australia had not received signals from the plane’s emergency locator either, it told Indonesia in a reply to a query, agency chief Syaugi said.

The effort to locate the wreckage and retrieve the black boxes will represent the second major deep-sea recovery challenge for Indonesian investigators after an AirAsia Airbus jet crashed into the Java Sea in December 2015.

Under international rules, the U.S. National Transporation Safety Board will automatically assist with the inquiry into Monday’s crash, backed up by technical advisers from Boeing and U.S.-French engine maker CFM International, co-owned by General Electric and Safran.

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Boeing is aware of the airplane accident reports and is “closely monitoring” the situation, a company spokesman told Reuters.

The flight took off from Jakarta around 6.20 a.m. and was due to have landed in the capital of the Bangka-Belitung tin mining region at 7.20 a.m., the Flightradar 24 website showed.

“We cannot give any comment at this moment,” Edward Sirait, chief executive of Lion Air Group, told Reuters, adding that a news conference was planned for later on Monday. “We are trying to collect all the information and data.”

Preliminary flight tracking data from Flightradar24 shows the aircraft climbed to around 1,524 metres before losing, and then regaining, height, before finally falling towards the sea.

It was last recorded at 1,113 metres and its speed had risen to 345 knots, according to raw data captured by the respected tracking website, which could not immediately be confirmed.

Its last recorded position was about 15 km north of the Indonesian coastline, according to a Google Maps reference of the last coordinates reported by Flightradar24.

The accident is the first to be reported that involves the widely-sold Boeing 737 MAX, an updated, more fuel-efficient version of the manufacturer’s workhorse single-aisle jet. The first Boeing 737 MAX jets were introduced into service in 2017.

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The very first global delivery went to Lion Air’s Malaysian subsidiary, Malindo Air.

Indonesia is one of the world’s fastest-growing aviation markets, but its safety record is patchy.

Founded in 1999, Lion Air’s only fatal accident to date was in 2004, when an MD-82 crashed upon landing at Solo City, killing 25 of the 163 people on board, the Flight Safety Foundation’s Aviation Safety Network says.

However, six other Lion Air jets, including one that crash-landed in the water short of the runway at the Indonesian resort island of Bali in 2013, were damaged beyond repair in various accidents, according to Aviation Safety Network.

Lion Air was removed from the European Union’s air safety blacklist in June 2016.

The privately owned airline in April announced a firm order to buy 50 Boeing 737 MAX 10 narrowbody jets with a list price of $6.24 billion. It is one of the US planemaker’s largest customers globally

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Kenya Airways will use a Boeing 787-8 for the route, featuring 30 fully flat business class seats and 204 economy seats. The route will cover a distance of 7,360 miles in each direction, so this is an ultra longhaul route. The flight is already bookable, and there’s even award space — it looks like there are two business class award seats available every date.

 

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