The Lion Air flight between Jakarta and an island off Sumatra went down on Monday morning, with the passenger jet having lost contact just 13 minutes after take-off.
Indonesian search and rescue officials have recovered body parts from the scene of the crash, in addition to ID cards, bags, mangled mobile phones and other belongings.
They have also retrieved pieces of the aircraft, although the main body of the plane has not yet been found and they are not expecting any of those on board to have survived.
Operation director Bambang Suryo Aji told reporters: "My prediction is that nobody survived because the victims that we found, their bodies were no longer intact. And it's been hours, so it is likely 189 people have died."
Among those on board were crew, an Italian national, one baby, two children, and around 20 members of staff from the Indonesian finance ministry, but so far only one of the pilots has been named.
The Indian Embassy named one of them as Indian citizen Bhavye Suneja, whose parents are en route to Indonesia from their home in New Delhi.
He and his co-pilot had 11,000 flying hours between them.
Lion Air chief executive Edward Sirait admitted that the plane involved in the crash had experienced a "technical problem" on a previous flight, but said it had been resolved "according to procedure".
He did not specify what the issue was and the airline insisted that the plane was airworthy when it left Jakarta at 6.20am, bound for Pangkal Pinang, on the island of Bangka, about an hour later.
But the Boeing 737-800 was cleared to return to its departure airport after making a request just two or three minutes after take-off, before the crew of a tug boat nearby told authorities they saw it falling from the sky.
Yusuf Latif, a spokesperson for the search and rescue agency, said it crashed into water "about 30 to 40 metres deep".
Relatives gathered at Pangkal Pinang airport and the Indonesian National Search and Rescue Agency headquarters in the capital in the hope of good news, but have been told it is likely all those on board are dead.
Feni, who uses a single name, said her soon-to-be-married sister was on the flight and had been planning to meet relatives in Pangkal Pinang.
She said: "We are here to find any information about my younger sister, her fiance, her in-law to be and a friend of them.
"We don't have any information. No one provided us with any information that we need. We're confused. We hope that our family is still alive."
More than 300 people, including soldiers, police, divers and fishermen are involved in the ongoing search, which is expected to last for at least seven days.ope Francis has expressed his condolences to those affected, offering "the assurance of his prayers for all those who have died and for those who mourn their loss".
Indonesian President Joko Widodo has met relatives of those on-board, and urged people to "keep on praying" as search teams continue their work.
The accident is the first involving the fuel-efficient Boeing 737 MAX model, powered by two CFM LEAP-1B engines, which was first delivered to Lion Air in 2017.
Aviation tracking service Flight Radar said the plane that crashed had been delivered to the budget airline in August.
The crash will be a huge blow to the reputation of Lion Air, which until 2016 had been banned by the EU from flying to member states due to fears over aviation regulation in Indonesia.
There have been concerns that the aviation industry in Indonesia has been growing far too quickly, with too few well-trained personnel to keep up with growing demand for air travel on the island nation.
Lion Air only began operating in 2000, one year after its founding, and has grown to operate 183 flights in Indonesia and in other surrounding nations, including Malaysia and China.
Following the crash on Monday, the Australian government announced on its website that its officials and contractors would no longer use the airline.
The European Commission said it had no immediate plans to ban Lion Air again, as there "have been no indications that the safety levels at Lion Air or the safety oversight in Indonesia" were deteriorating.
Spokesman Enrico Brivio says the commission would analyse the results of the investigation into the crash.
If fears that all 189 people on board the Lion Air flight are well-placed, it would make it the deadliest air accident of the year so far - and the second most devastating plane crash in Indonesia's history.
The worst was in 1997, when 234 people were killed in an Airbus A-300B4 crash. The plane - operated by Garuda Indonesia - went down in a smog-shrouded ravine in North Sumatra.
In 2014, an AirAsia plane plunged into the Java Sea during a storm, killing 162 people. It was flying from the Indonesian city of Surabaya to Singapore at the time.
Nine years prior, a Mandala Airlines domestic flight crashed into a densely populated suburb in Medan. Passengers, crew and people on the ground made up the 150 people who died.
Other major accidents include an Adam Air plane that went down off the island of Sulawesi on New Year's Day in 2007, killing all 102 people on-board.
Indonesian authorities said the pilots lost control after becoming preoccupied with malfunctioning navigational equipment.
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