Indian pilot captained Indonesian plane that crashed into sea
Jakarta, Oct 29 : Indian pilot Bhavye Suneja captained the ill-fated Indonesian plane which crashed into the sea on Monday with 188 passengers and crew on board while en-route to Pangkal pinang city, the airline said.
The Lion Air flight JT610 crashed into the sea off Indonesia's island of Java, 13 minutes after taking off from Jakarta Soekarno Hatta International Airport.
The flight en-route to Pangkal pinang city lost contact with ground officials and crashed in the Java Sea on its way to Indonesia's tin-mining hub.
The flight carried 178 adults, 1 child and 2 infants, including 3 crew under training and 1 technician, the airline said in a statement. The aircraft was commanded by Captain Suneja and co-pilot Harvino with six cabin crew members.
The 31-year-old captain has 6,000 flight hours and the co-pilot more than 5,000 flight hours, the statement said. Captain Suneja was a resident of Jakarta originally from New Delhi. He attended Ahlcon Public School in Mayur Vihar.
According to his Linkedin profile, he had been working at Lion Air since March 2011 and was also a trainee pilot with Emirates from September and December 2010.
Flight JT610 was a Boeing 737 MAX 8 that was delivered in August and had 800 hours of flying time. It sunk in waters about 30 to 35 metres, north of the coast of Java island. The aircraft was declared operationally feasible, the statement said.
The top priority for investigators will be finding the cockpit voice recorder and flight data recorder to help determine the cause, a media report said, quoting safety experts.
The pilots had asked to turn back to base shortly before losing contact with air traffic control, the report said, quoting spokesman for Indonesia's air navigation authorities.
Privately owned budget carrier Lion Air was founded in 1999 and its only fatal accident to date was when a MD-82 crashed upon landing at Solo City in 2004, killing 25 of the 163 people on board, according to the Flight Safety Foundation's Aviation Safety Network.
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Another North Goa nightclub sealed; Kejriwal says corruption led to fire tragedy
Panaji (PTI): As part of a crackdown against tourist establishments violating laws and safety norms in the aftermath of the Arpora fire tragedy, Goa authorities on Saturday sealed a renowned club at Vagator and revoked the fire department NOC of another club.
Cafe CO2 Goa, located on a cliff overlooking the Arabian Sea at Vagator beach in North Goa, was sealed. The move came two days after Goya Club, also in Vagator, was shut down for alleged violations of rules.
Elsewhere, campaigning for local body polls, AAP leader Arvind Kejriwal said the fire incident at Birch by Romeo Lane nightclub at Arpora, which claimed 25 lives on December 6, happened because the BJP government in the state was corrupt.
An inspection of Cafe CO2 Goa by a state government-appointed team revealed that the establishment, with a seating capacity of 250, did not possess a no-objection certificate (NOC) of the Fire and Emergency Services Department. The club, which sits atop Ozrant Cliff, also did not have structural stability, the team found.
The Fire and Emergency Services on Saturday also revoked the NOC issued to Diaz Pool Club and Bar at Anjuna as the fire extinguishers installed in the establishment were found to be inadequate, said divisional fire officer Shripad Gawas.
A notice was issued to Nitin Wadhwa, the partner of the club, he said in the order.
Campaigning at Chimbel village near Panaji in support of his party's Zilla Panchayat election candidate, Aam Aadmi Party leader Kejriwal said the nightclub fire at Arpora happened because of the "corruption of the Pramod Sawant-led state government."
"Why this fire incident happened? I read in the newspapers that the nightclub had no occupancy certificate, no building licence, no excise licence, no construction licence or trade licence. The entire club was illegal but still it was going on," he said.
"How could it go on? Couldn't Pramod Sawant or anyone else see it? I was told that hafta (bribe) was being paid," the former Delhi chief minister said.
A person can not work without bribing officials in the coastal state, Kejriwal said, alleging that officers, MLAs and even ministers are accepting bribes.
