Indonesia passenger plane missing after take-off

[James48]

Source: BBC World News

A passenger plane with more than 50 people on board has gone missing after take-off from the Indonesian capital Jakarta.

The Sriwijaya Air Boeing 737-500 lost contact en route to Pontianak in West Kalimantan province, officials said.

Flight tracking website Flightradar24.com said the aircraft had lost more than 3,000m (10,000ft) in altitude in less than a minute.
The transport ministry said search and rescue efforts were under way.

Read more: https://www.bbc.com/news/world-asia-55601909

---

This is a Boeing 737-500, an older model.

Some sources are saying radar tracking shows it descended from 10,000 to the surface in about one minute. Still trying to get better source and updated info.

[live love laugh]

1. Boeing 737

[Agschmid]

3. This is one of the most common planes in flight at any given time.

Also this plane has almost nothing to do with the more widely known MAX.

[regnaD kciN]

9. Indeed...

The 737-500 is decades-old, a full two generations before the MAX, with technology that, in some ways, hearkens back more to the early days of the "jet age" than to anything in modern aircraft. And it doesn't have the MCAS system that caused problems with the MAX.

Frankly, when you get a crash involving a twenty-seven-year-old aircraft that has likely made tens of thousands of flights covering millions of miles, the most reasonable things to look at are pilot error and inadequate maintenance, not some inherent design or manufacturing flaw of the aircraft type that somehow escaped detection for decades.

At the risk of making an analogy that unavoidably trivializes the tragedy of this event, if your brand-new Honda Accord has its transmission self-destruct within the first year of ownership, you might suspect a manufacturing problem; if the same thing happens to the transmission of your 1995 Accord with 600,000 miles on it, you're probably not going to be demanding that Honda issue a recall; rather, you might want to ask yourself if you kept up-to-date on the fluid changes and other maintenance for the unit. Apparently, the airline in question here has a pretty bad reputation among Asian carriers, to the point that even one of its own executives, at one point, suggested the airline be grounded until it had worked out its maintenance problems.

[mahatmakanejeeves]

2. Apparently fisherman have already

737-500 looks like it did a bloody fast nose dive into the water, apparently fisherman have already found debris

Link to tweet

[uppityperson]

4. Oh no

[Marrah_Goodman]

5. So sad :(

[Marthe48]

6. Always such sad news

I hope they didn't have time to be terrified.

[question everything]

7. Not again

[pat_k]

8. I got curious about the number of fatal 737 crashes by model

I checked out Wikipedia's List of accidents and incidents involving the Boeing 737. '

'For anyone as nerdy as I am, below is what a got from the page -- and from other sources on production timelines and numbers.

Looks like there have been a total of 126 crashes of 737's (all models) since 1970. (May not be perfectly accurate -- went through pretty quick).

The bottom line is that I think I'd prefer to stick with the Next Generation models when flying (737-600/-700/-800/-900).

A couple tidbits from elsewhere:

Number of 737's (all models) delivered through Feb 2020 = 10,575

An analysis by Boeing on commercial jet airplane accidents in the period 1959–2017 showed that the Next Generation series had a hull loss rate of 0.17 per million departures compared to 0.71 for the classic series and 1.75 for the original series.[73] source. I assume hull loss includes non-fatal.

==============================
737 Original (-100/-200) aircraft started flying in 1967

77 fatal crashes in 54 years = 1.43 per year

Produced from 1967 to 1988

30 737/100's produced
1,095 727/200 produced

Assuming the planes produced all went into service that's fatal loss of about 70 planes per 1000 over 50 years operating (Crashes per number of flights or flight hours would be much more meaningful, but don't know that)

0 - 1967
0 - 1968
0 - 1969
1 - 1970
0 - 1971
2 - 1972
2 - 1973
0 - 1974
1 - 1975
0 - 1976
2 - 1977
1 - 1978
1 - 1979
1 - 1980
2 - 1981
3 - 1982
3 - 1983
2 - 1984
3 - 1985
3 - 1986
2 - 1987
4 - 1988
2 - 1989
1 - 1990
1 - 1991
2 - 1992
9 - 1993
2 - 1994
3 - 1995
3 - 1996
1 - 1997
1 - 1998
2 - 1999
1 - 2000
0 - 2001
1 - 2002
2 - 2003
0 - 2004
3 - 2005
1 - 2006
2 - 2007
2 - 2008
0 - 2009
2 - 2010
1 - 2011
1 - 2012
0 - 2013
0 - 2014
0 - 2015
0 - 2016
0 - 2017
1 - 2018
0 - 2019 (as of 2019, only 46 still in service, generally with charter operators)
0 - 2020

----------------------------------
737 Classic (-300/-400/-500) aircraft (started flying in 1984)

38 years flying, 36 fatal crashes = 1.05 per year

Conflicting numbers. Produced 1984 - 2000. One source says 1,988 were produced. Assuming all produced went into service, a fatal loss of about 18 planes per 1000 planes over 38 years operating (Crashes per number of flights or flight hours would be much more meaningful, but don't know that)
0 - 1984
0 - 1985
0 - 1986
0 - 1997
1 - 1988
2 - 1989
1 - 1990
1 - 1991
1 - 1992
1 - 1993
1 - 1994
0 - 1995
0 - 1996
2 - 1997
1 - 1998
1 - 1999
1 - 2000
1 - 2001
2 - 2002
0 - 2003
1 - 2004
2 - 2005
3 - 2006
3 - 2007
2 - 2008
1 - 2009
2 - 2010
1 - 2011
0 - 2012
1 - 2013
0 - 2014
1 - 2015
1 - 2016
1 - 2017
0 - 2018
0 - 2019
0 - 2020
1 - 2021 (the Indonesia flight)


--------------------------------------
737 Next Generation (-600/-700/-800/-900) started flying in Dec 1997

12 fatal accidents = 0.55 per year

1998 - 2020 7,067 delivered
Fatal loss of 1.6 planes per 1000 over 22 years operating
Sixteen-million hours per accident cited here (includes non-fatal events)


0 - 1998
0 - 1999
0 - 2000
0 - 2001
0 - 2002
0 - 2003
0 - 2004
0 - 2005
1 - 2006
1 - 2007
1 - 2008
0 - 2009
3 - 2010
0 - 2011
0 - 2012
0 - 2013
0 - 2014
0 - 2015
1 - 2016
2 - 2018
0 - 2019
3 - 2020

Max
1 - 2018
1 - 2019