Pregnant mum's chilling last Instagram post before plane crash
A pregnant mum made a chilling Instagram post moments before her plane vanished and crashed into the sea.
Ratih Windania is one of 62 people feared dead on board Sriwijaya Air Flight SJ 182 after the plane disappeared following its departure from Jakarta, Indonesia, on Saturday.
Indonesian authorities said they had recovered pieces of wreckage and body parts on Sunday from the waters north of Jakarta.
The mother posted on Instagram from the airport before boarding the flight.
“Bye bye family. We’re heading home for now,” she wrote on her Instagram story with a photo of people wearing face masks, presumably her relatives, at the airport and two emojis blowing kisses, according to local news outlet Serambi Indonesia.
Her brother, Irfansyah Riyanto, told reporters the family now felt “powerless”.
“We can only wait and hope to have any information soon,” he said.
Mr Irfansyah said his relatives had originally been due to take an earlier flight operated by Sriwijaya’s unit NAM Air and he was unclear why that was changed.
His sister and her two children had been at the end of a three-week holiday and were taking the 740km trip home to Pontianak on the island of West Kalimantan.
“I was the one who drove them to the airport, helped with the check-ins and the luggage... I feel like I still can’t believe this and it happened too fast,” Mr Irfansyah said.
Her dad, Iwan, told CNN his daughter was four months’ pregnant.
Authorities track signals from ill-fated flight
Indonesian authorities said they had tracked signals likely from the plane’s black boxes on Sunday.
Police asked families to provide information to help identify any bodies retrieved such as dental records and DNA samples.
At the police hospital, Chris Mamahit, the brother of co-pilot Diego Mamahit, said he had been asked for a blood sample.
“I believe my younger brother survived, these are just for the police procedure,” he said.
“Diego is a good man, we still believe Diego survived.”
On his LinkedIn profile, Mr Mahamit had written: “I really love to fly.”
He and pilot Afwan, who goes by only one name, had nearly two decades of commercial flying experience between them. Afwan had previously been an air force pilot.
“We, the family, still hope for good news,” a family member of Afwan, a devout Muslim, told Detik.com.
Husband’s last message from school teacher wife
President Joko Widodo offered sympathy on Sunday.
“We are making our best efforts to find and rescue the victims and we all pray that they can be found,” he said.
Panca Widiya Nursanti, a middle-school teacher in Pontianak, had been returning after a vacation in her hometown of Tegal in Central Java.
In Pontianak, her husband, Rafiq Yusuf Al Idrus, recounted the last contact he had with her.
“I was joking by saying that when she arrived in Pontianak we would eat satay together,” he said.
“She contacted me via Whatsapp at 2.05pm with laughter. She was already boarding the plane and she said the weather conditions were not good. I said pray a lot, please.”
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