New aircraft
The plane that suffered the crash is a Boeing 737 Max 8, a recent model. According to FlightRadar24, the aircraft was delivered to Lion Air in August of this year.
The crash is the first involving the Boeing 737 MAX, an upgraded and more efficient version of the aircraft. The first Boeing 737 MAX jets went live in 2017. Lion Air's Malaysian subsidiary Malindo Air received the first global delivery.
The aircraft was two months with the airline and had already presented problems that would have been resolved according to the manufacturer's guidelines.
The Indonesian aviation market is one of the fastest growing on the planet, but it has several flaws when it comes to safety.
If there are no survivors, it will be the second worst disaster involving aircraft in the country since 1997, when a plane crashed in Medan, killing 214 people.
In 2013, a similar airplane from Lion Air suffered an incident when it fell during its approach to the runway at Ngurah Rai International Airport on the island of Bali. but all 108 passengers survived.
In December 2014, an AirAsia aircraft crashed while taking 162 passengers on the Surabaya-Singapore route.