afterwards putting it together? it's horrific. what can you tell us about this crash? >> reporter: alex, this is such a sad story, and people are going to be asking, why did this happen? because this was a brand-new boeing 737, less than six months old. it lost contact with radar just six minutes after taking off. it crashed about 30 miles from the airport. and when you look at the model here, a boeing 737 max 8, this is the same aircraft model that was involved in another crash in indonesia back in october, that lion air crash. that plane also crashed 12 minutes after takeoff. 189 people on board were killed. so a lot of questions for boeing this morning. they have tweeted they are aware of reports of this accident. meanwhile, the prime minister has tweeted out his condolences. now, the airline says there are casualties, but they also tweeted that there was a search-and-rescue operation ongoing. so it's unclear just exactly what's happened. we heard from that man earlier, finding out on facebook, an