Haunting selfie taken minutes before plane crashed into ocean
A newlywed husband, who was onboard missing Lion Air flight JT-610, sent his wife a selfie just minutes before the packed aircraft crashed into the sea.
Deryl Fida Febrianto, 22, was married just two weeks ago and was on his way to Pangkal Pinang to work on a cruise ship
His wife, Lutfinani Eka Putri, 23, said that her husband messaged her from the aircraft at 6:12 a.m., sending her a photo from the plane.
At 6.15 he stopped replying to her messages.
“When I saw the news, I matched the flight number with the ticket photo Deryl had sent,” she said, revealing the pair had spent most of their childhoods together.
“I immediately started crying.”
Mr Febrianto was one of 189 people on board the Boeing 737 Max 8 that crashed into the ocean just 13 minutes after take-off.
Plane was ‘almost brand new’
The captain of Monday’s flight JT610 from Jakarta to Pangkal Pinang, the main town on Bangka, a beach-fringed island off Sumatra, was Bhavye Suneja, a 31-year-old Indian citizen originally from New Delhi. He and an Italian passenger were the only known foreigners on board.
According to his Linkedin account, Suneja had worked for Lion Air since 2011, clocking up some 6,000 flight hours. On Facebook there are photos of him in his Lion Air uniform, smiling.
Minutes after take-off at 6:20 am, Suneja reported technical difficulties and obtained permission from ground officials to turn back.
Data from FlightRadar24 shows the first sign of something amiss was around two minutes into the flight, when the plane had reached 610 metres.
The plane dropped more than 152 metres, veered to the left and then started climbing again to 1,524 metres. It gained speed in the final moments before data was lost when it was at an altitude of 1,113 metres.
The Boeing 737 MAX 8 is the most recent model of Boeing’s famous 737, the US company’s best-selling plane, and is a popular choice among budget airlines around the world.
Lion Air’s plane was almost brand new. It was flown for the first time on August 15, and the airline said it had been certified as airworthy before Monday’s flight by an engineer who is a specialist in Boeing models.
Lion Air Chief Executive Edward Sirait said on Monday that the plane had encountered an unspecified “technical issue” on its previous flight, which was from the resort island of Bali to Jakarta, but this had been “resolved according to procedure”.
“We don’t dare to say what the facts are, or are not, yet,” he told reporters. “We are also confused about the why, since it was a new plane.”
‘Wait and be brave’
At Jakarta airport, tearful passengers waited for news: a mother urged her toddler son to “wait and be brave”, another told her crying girl, “be patient, pray the best for Papa.”
The only news that came, though, was of body parts and debris found floating in the water around the crash site.
Photos published by the search and rescue agency showed pictures of articles belonging to passengers, including ID cards, a driving licence, and a pair of children’s shoes.
