Notably, the Lion Air flight flying from Jakarta to Sumatra had plunged into the Java sea coast just a few minutes after take-off. The flight took off from the country’s capital Jakarta at 6.20 am and went missing 13 minutes later.
The aircraft, a Boeing 737, reportedly had 189 passengers and crew (two pilots and five flight attendants) aboard.
Captain Suneja was a resident of Delhi and had been associated with the airline since March 2011.
Indonesia, a growing market for budget airlines, has a patchy safety record according to experts. An Air Asia flight to Singapore had crashed on December 28, 2014, killing all 162 passengers on board. Lion Air, in the past, has had one fatal accident in 2004 where 25 of 163 people on board were killed while landing in Solo City.
Lion Air was removed from the European Union’s air safety blacklist in June 2016.