TRAGIC: Flight with 189 Passengers Crashes into Jakarta Sea

An aircraft with 189 passengers on board is believed to have sunk after crashing into the sea off Indonesia’s island of Java on Monday.

The plane crashed shortly after takeoff from the capital on its way to the country’s tin-mining hub, officials said.

A spokesman for Indonesia’s search and rescue agency said the Lion Air flight, JT610, lost contact 13 minutes after takeoff, adding that a tug boat leaving the capital’s port had seen the craft falling.

“It has been confirmed that it has crashed,” the spokesman, Yusuf Latif, said by text message, when asked about the fate of the plane, which air tracking service Flightradar 24 identified as a Boeing 737 MAX 8.

An official from Indonesia's disaster agency tweeted that several pieces of wreckage were found in the waters off the coast of West Java.

Lion Air also said that the flight captain Bhavye Suneja had more than 6,000 hours of flight time while the co-pilot, Harvino, had about 5,000 hours of flight time.

According to Reuters, a spokesman for the country's search and rescue agency said that a tug boat leaving Jakarta's port had seen the aircraft falling. Yusuf Latif, a spokesman for the National Search and Rescue Agency, told Reuters by text that the flight "has been confirmed that it has crashed."

A spokeswoman for Boeing told CNBC that the firm is "deeply saddened by the loss of Lion Air Flight JT 610." The company stands "ready to provide technical assistance to the accident investigation."

A spokeswoman for engine maker CFM International, a joint venture of General Electric and France's Safran, said the plane was powered by its CFM LEAP 1B engines.

"CFM ... is standing by to offer any assistance required by Lion Air, the National Transportation Safety Committee of Indonesian, and the U.S. National Transportation Safety Board," she said in a statement.

Lion Air is one of Indonesia's youngest and biggest airlines, flying to dozens of domestic and international destinations.

In 2013, one of its Boeing 737-800 jets missed the runway while landing on the resort island of Bali, crashing into the sea without causing any fatalities among the 108 people on board.