Indonesia crash: Elderly parents, pregnant wife look for man aboard ill-fated flight

Jakarta, Oct 29: A 56-year-old man Latief Nurbana, a civil servant at Indonesia's Coordinating Ministry for Maritime Affairs, is spending tense hours as his son Muhammad Lutfi Nuramdani was travelling in the ill-fated Lion Air Flight JT610 which took from Jakarta just minutes before crashing into the sea. All 189 passengers on board were believed to be dead.

The flight was heading to Pangkalpinang on the island of Bangka when disaster struck. The plane, a Boeing 737 Max 8 jet, lost contact with the air traffic control 13 minutes into the flight and flight data later showed it making a steep descent into the sea.

We have processed the granular ADS-B data received from #JT610. Last signal was received at 23:31:56.030 UTC from -5.81346, 107.12698 at 425 ft AMSL. Final ADS-B data received from the aircraft indicates a high rate of descent.

Data and context: https://t.co/QCUucGKVHr pic.twitter.com/bKoeAssrwE

— Flightradar24 (@flightradar24) October 29, 2018

According to Singapore-based Straits Times, Nurbana and his wife Yeti Eka Sumiati went to Jakarta's Soekarno Hatta Airport hoping that their son was alive.

"We, three of us, slept in the same room last night. He is our second son. He works for Pos Indonesia in Pangkalpinang. His wife is from Pangkalpinang," Latief was quoted as saying by the Times. He also said that his daughter-in-law is seven months pregnant.

Nuramdani regularly travelled to Jakarta and his mother had accompanied him to the airport on Monday morning before he departed, the report said. Latief, too, wanted to accompany them but had some prior work.

Indonesian President Joko Widodo condoled in a television address made on Monday afternoon.