JAKARTA, Indonesia—A Lion Air jet with 189 people on board hit the surface of the Java Sea with enough speed that it “disintegrated” upon impact, the lead investigator said Wednesday.
Indonesia’s Transportation Ministry meanwhile ordered the budget carrier to suspend its technical director pending a probe into what is the first major accident involving the Boeing 737 Max 8, the latest variant of the popular single-aisle 737.
Since the jet crashed Monday shortly after takeoff, ships with sonar and as many as 100 divers have been concentrating their efforts near a debris field off the coast north of Jakarta. They have recovered human remains, personal items and small, broken pieces of the plane.
“We are sure that the aircraft disintegrated after a high-speed impact with water,” said Soerjanto Tjahjono, head of Indonesia’s National Transportation Safety Committee leading the crash investigation. “We have found only small pieces of debris.”
“The aircraft didn’t stall midair and then fall,” Mr. Tjahjono said.
Larger pieces of wreckage, such as the fuselage, have been elusive. Investigators have detected pings they say are likely coming from the black box flight data and voice recorders and are reviewing images captured by a remotely operated vehicle at a depth of around 115 feet.
Returning divers said Wednesday afternoon they faced a strong current and poor underwater visibility caused by sediment and cloudy skies. One object of interest turned out to be a shipwreck. One investigator said the remotely operated vehicle broke down and requires repairs.
At a port near Jakarta, search workers have sorted recovered items such as shoes and bags onto tarps. Human remains have been sent in dozens of body bags to a hospital for DNA testing.
Transportation Minister Budi Karya Sumadi ordered the suspension of airline personnel who had cleared the jet to fly, saying the technical director, identified by Lion Air as Muhammad Asif, would be replaced along with technicians and others pending an investigation. Mr. Asif couldn’t be immediately reached for comment.
Lion Air, formally known as PT Lion Mentari Airlines, could face corporate sanctions, Mr. Sumadi said.
Ministry spokesman Baitul Ihwan said the suspension was ordered because “the investigation is going to require their attention.”
Search at Sea
New Boeing 737 model went missing shortly after takeoff from Jakarta to Pangkal Pinang.
MALAYSIA
Singapore
INDONESIA
Pangkal Pinang
Crash site
Java Sea
Jakarta
100 miles
100 km
Source: Lion Air
A Lion Air spokesman confirmed the suspension of Mr. Asif, who was responsible for Lion Air’s maintenance operations. He couldn’t confirm whether other staff had been suspended.
Investigators are gathering flight logs, maintenance records and other documents related to the jet and seeking clarity from Lion about what the airline described as a “technical issue” the plane experienced Sunday on a flight from Bali to Jakarta. Lion has said the issue was resolved prior to Monday’s fatal flight.
“We can confirm the aircraft was having some problems’’ on the Sunday flight, said Mr. Tjahjono. “However, we have not verified what the problem was.”
Some passengers on the Sunday flight from Bali said that the flight was delayed without clear explanation. Samir Skif, 38, said power was cut to the cabin during the delay and passengers sat in darkness for more than an hour without air conditioning.
“Some people were suffocating so started leaving the plane,” he said.
The plane eventually left and experienced turbulence for the duration of the flight, he said, “but nothing really freaking out or dramatic.”
Lion Air didn’t immediately respond to a request for comment.
Potentially faulty or misleading airspeed indications in the cockpit have emerged as an initial focus of safety experts, according to industry officials tracking the investigation.
Data collected by Flightradar24, a flight-tracking network, indicated the plane suffered from possible erratic speed and altitude readings on both the flight that crashed and the previous flight, including a dip in altitude that a pilot described as unusual.
Air-traffic controllers lost contact with Flight 610 shortly after it took off for the island of Bangka. The Transportation Ministry said the pilots requested to return to the Jakarta airport before disappearing from radar.
Boeing Co. , which is participating in the probe, has privately expressed an interest in whether the pilots received unreliable speed data and about the maintenance history of the plane, according to people familiar with the conversations.
Debris Found in Search for Indonesian Plane Crash
A Boeing spokesman declined to comment, referring to the company’s previous statement that it was providing technical assistance in the probe and directing questions to Indonesian authorities.
The Transportation Ministry has ordered the two Indonesian airlines flying the Boeing 737 Max 8, Lion Air and flag carrier Garuda Indonesia , to report on any repetitive problems and explain procedures they use to fix them. The planes will remain in service and won’t be grounded.
Lion Air is one of Asia’s biggest budget carriers. It has had a patchy safety record. In April 2013, a new Boeing plane crashed into shallow water short of the runway on the resort island of Bali. All 108 passengers and crew were rescued. The crash was blamed on pilot error.
Indonesia has a long history of aviation disasters and its carriers were restricted for many years from flying to the U.S. and Europe for safety reasons. The last restrictions on Indonesia airlines were lifted in June this year.
—Jake Maxwell Watts and Andy Pasztor contributed to this article.
Write to Ben Otto at ben.otto@wsj.com, Gaurav Raghuvanshi at gaurav.raghuvanshi@wsj.com and I Made Sentana at i-made.sentana@wsj.com
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