The pilot of the downed Lion Air flight asked to turn back right before it crashed into the sea off Indonesia

Reuters

A Lion Air plane crashed shortly after A Lion Air airplane takes off at Jakarta airport in 2013.

• The pilot onboard Lion Air flight JT 610 tried to turn his plane around before it crashed.
• The Boeing 737 Max 8 was carrying 189 people from Jakarta to Bangka island on Monday morning and went down over the sea.
• Here's what we know about those on board. All are feared to be dead.

The pilot on a Lion Air plane that crashed into the sea off Indonesia on Monday morning asked airport control to let him turn back minutes before the plane went down.

The 6:21 a.m. flight on Monday from Soekarno-Hatta International Airport, Jakarta, had been bound for Depati Airport in Pangkal Pinang, Bangka, a large Indonesian island, plane monitoring site Flight Radar said.

Flight JT 610 fell into coastal waters off Java island around 13 minutes after takeoff.

Pilot Bhavye Suneja asked air control staff to clear a Return to Base (RTB) request back to Soekarno-Hatta International Airport, Jakarta, two or three minutes after the plane had taken off, Reuters reported.

The request was approved, but communications from the plane went silent until it fell into the sea minutes later.

Reuters

Workers search through debris from the crashed Lion Air flight JT 610, off the shore of Karawang regency, West Java province, Indonesia, October 29, 2018.

Soerjanto Tjahjono, head of Indonesia's transport safety committee, told Reuters: "It's correct that an RTB was requested and had been approved but we're still trying to figure out the reason."

"We hope the black box is not far from the main wreckage so it can be found soon."

The black box - which saves all plane data during a flight - is the key to working out what went wrong with the Boeing 737 Max 8 aircraft, officials said, according to Channel News Asia.

Reuters

Rescue personnel prepare to dive at the location where a Lion Air plane crashed into the sea in the north coast of Karawang regency, West Java province Indonesia, October 29, 2018.

Muhmmad Syaugi, the head of the Indonesian National Search And Rescue Agency, told Reuters that officials had not received a distress signal from the aircraft's emergency transmitter.

Emergency transmitters send out a location when planes crash, but the one onboard flight JT 610 didn't transmit a signal.

The plane was brand new, had only been in use since August. Boeing, the aircraft maker, said it was "deeply saddened" by the plane's downing and "stands ready to provide technical assistance to the accident investigation."

Sutopo Purwo Nugroho, public relations officer for the Indonesian National Board for Disaster Management tweeted these photos of divers at the crash site: