Indonesia Lion Air flight crashes with 189 aboard

An Indonesian passenger plane carrying 189 people crashed into the ocean on Monday, authorities said.

Search and rescue officials said they lost contact with Lion Air flight JT610 shortly after takeoff near Jakarta, the country’s capital.

The 189 aboard included three children and the crew, officials said.

Sutopo Purwo Nugroho, a spokesperson National Board for Disaster Management, said the plane crashed near the coast of Bekasi, West Java, early Monday morning.

“We can confirm that one of our flights has lost contact,” Lion Air spokesman Danang Mandala Prihantoro told the Associated Press. “Its position cannot be ascertained yet.”

The Boeing 737-800 jet was scheduled to land at Depati Amir Airport in Pangkal Pinang, an island off Sumatra, at 7:10 a.m. local time.

The plane took off at 6:20 a.m. and lost contact about 13 minutes later, the airline said in a statement.

Lion Air is one of Indonesia’s largest airlines.

In 2013, one of its Boeing 737-800 jets missed the runway while landing in Bali, crashing into the sea, but all 108 people on board survived, according to the AP. Indonesian airlines in 2007 were barred from flying to Europe because of safety concerns, though several were allowed to resume services in the following decade. That ban was lifted in June, as the U.S. lifted a decade-long ban in 2016.