[Photo/Xinhua]

A senior official of the Lion Air whose plane overshot the runway and crashed into sea while trying to land at an airport in Bali on Saturday afternoon said that the plane and its crew were fit to fly.

Speaking at a press conference held at the Lion Air office here, Lion Air spokesman Edward Sirait said that the ill-fated Boeing 737-800 produced in 2012 was delivered to the Indonesian budget airlines last month.

"That crashed plane arrived in Jakarta on March 28 from its production center. It was part of 12 planes of its kind we ordered from Boeing," Edward told reporters.

Edward said that before the crash, the plane served flights to Palu and Pekanbaru, capital cities of Central Sulawesi and Riau provinces.

Edward said that the plane with flight code of JT 904 departed from Bandung's Hussain Sastranegara airport and was scheduled to land at Bali's Ngurah Rai airport at 15:30 Central Indonesian time (WIT).

"The plane carried 101 passengers including 95 adults, 5 children and 1 baby, and 7 crew. All of them were safe," Edward said.

He said that the pilots were fit to fly as all of them had qualified the six-month flight check by the firm.

He added that Lion Air would remove the wreckage of the plane from the crash site after obtaining clearance from the country's aviation authorities. The crash site was 50 meters away from the airport.

Edward said that Lion Air would provide compensation to passengers for medical treatment and losses.

Indonesian Transportation Ministry has dispatched officials to investigate into the crash along with officials from National Flight Safety Committee, the ministry's spokesperson Bambang S. Ervan said.

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