Monday's flight also appears to have crashed in the Java Sea. The search and rescue agency said the plane ended up in waters 30 to 35 meters deep. Oil slicks could be seen around the area where contact was lost with the aircraft.

Preliminary flight tracking data from Flightradar24 show the aircraft climbed to about 1,524 meters before losing height, then regaining it, before finally falling toward the sea.

It was last recorded at 1,112 meters and its speed had risen to 638 km/h, according to data obtained by the tracking website, which could not immediately be confirmed.

The plane's last recorded position was about 15 kilometers north of the Indonesian coast, according to a Google Maps reference of the last coordinates reported by Flightradar24.

The accident is the first one reported of a Boeing 737 MAX, an updated, more fuel-efficient version of the manufacturer's workhorse single-aisle jet. The new planes began operating last year.

The first global delivery went to Lion Air's Malaysian subsidiary, Malindo Air.

Lion Air chief executive Edward Sirait said the plane involved in Monday's crash had experienced a "technical problem" on a previous flight.

He said this had been resolved "according to procedure" following a flight from Denpasar to Cengkareng, but he did not specify what the problem was.

Founded in 1999, Lion Air's only fatal accident was in 2004, when an MD-82 crashed on landing at Solo City, killing 25 of the 163 people on board, the Flight Safety Foundation's Aviation Safety Network said.

However, six other Lion Air jets, including one that crashlanded in waters short of the runway on the Indonesian resort island of Bali in 2013, were damaged beyond repair in various accidents, according to the Aviation Safety Network website. There were no fatalities among the 108 people on board the Bali flight.

Lion Air was removed from the European Union's air safety blacklist in June 2016.

In April, the privately owned airline announced it would buy 50 Boeing 737 MAX 10 narrow-body jets at a total cost of $6.24 billion. Lion Air is one of the US planemaker's largest customers globally.

Indonesian TV showed footage of dozens of people waiting anxiously outside Pangkal Pinang airport while officials brought out plastic chairs.

The Jakarta Post, Asia News Network, Reuters and Zhou Jin contributed to this story.