Indonesian Lion Air Flight 610 crashed into the ocean on October 29th killing all 189 of its passengers. It was supposed to be a short one hour fight from Jakarta to Pangkal, however the plane crashed into the ocean 13 minutes after takeoff. Since the start of the search and rescue mission, over 65 personal bags have been found, but it is hard to identify victims because the bags contain more than one person’s belongings. So far only one person has been successfully identified. Search and Rescue is relying on DNA samples from all body tissues to successfully identify victims.

Search and Rescue successfully located the airplanes black box and discovered the plane had previously been experiencing problems from the previous four flights. A previous flight passenger, Robbi Gaharu, reported that the plane experienced a scary amount of altitude drop throughout the flight, also that the fight took around two hours before being able to be boarded. One of the most alarming comments Robbi said was, “It felt as if it was struggling to ascend….I thought maybe it was caused by turbulence. After 10 minutes in the air the plane dropped as if it was losing power. People panicked. It dropped about 400 feet.” Robbi confirmed it was 400 because he used a tracker app he had on his cell phone.  However the plane was new, it only had around 800 total flight hours.

The last shocking comment Robbi said was he could see the pilots and fight attendants in the cockpit bring out and furiously flip through a big white book. It has been a hard job for search and rescue, a diver passed away looking for the black box of the plane. While victims are being looked for and identified, investigators are working hard to figure out what was failing inside the plane’s system. They are also looking into why the plane would be used if it has been previously failing.

A big chunk of plane parts had been found on November 1st near the area of the crash. Some parts  were severely destroyed but they have been collected. The started an examination process, there hasn’t been much more information revealed and investigation continues.