The Boeing 737-500 had lived several lives before reaching Sriwijaya Air. Manufactured in 1994, it flew its maiden voyage on May 13 of that year and entered service with Continental Airlines two weeks later. When Continental merged with United Airlines in 2010, the aircraft transferred along with the rest of the fleet. In 2012, Sriwijaya Air purchased it - the first of fifteen 737-500s the Indonesian carrier acquired to replace its aging 737-200s. By the time of the accident, PK-CLC had accumulated 62,983 flight hours and 40,383 cycles. Between March and December 2020, the aircraft sat in storage for repairs, raising concerns among some experts that the extended period of inactivity may have contributed to mechanical deterioration. The autothrottle - a system that automatically adjusts engine thrust to maintain a target airspeed - had been a recurring source of trouble. The fix performed on January 5 did not hold. On the morning of the 9th, the system malfunctioned again.

Flight 182 departed late, pushing back from the gate after a delay. Captain Afwan, 54, a former Indonesian Air Force pilot with over 17,900 hours of flight experience, was in the left seat. First Officer Diego Mamahit, 34, with more than 5,100 hours, sat beside him. As the aircraft climbed through 10,000 feet, air traffic control instructed Captain Afwan to stop climbing at 11,000 feet. He adjusted the target altitude and entered it into the autopilot. The autothrottle responded by pulling the thrust levers back to prevent the aircraft from accelerating during the level-off. But only the left lever moved. The right lever stayed fixed. The asymmetric thrust - one engine producing significantly less power than the other - began pushing the aircraft into a left roll. The autopilot compensated, holding the wings level as long as it could. Then Captain Afwan disconnected the autopilot. Without its protection, and with his own left-turn input compounding the asymmetry, the aircraft rolled past 90 degrees and went inverted. First Officer Mamahit shouted a warning. Captain Afwan pulled back on the yoke, but because the aircraft was upside down, the input drove it toward the sea rather than away from it.

The crash site lay in shallow waters near the Thousand Islands, a chain of small islands in Jakarta Bay. There was no distress call. The scattered debris and small fragments of wreckage indicated a high-speed, near-vertical impact. On the night of January 9, rescuers recovered an emergency slide near Lancang Island. Over the following days, the Indonesian Navy, KOPASKA frogmen, and search vessels from Indonesia, South Korea, and Singapore combed the area. Personnel recovered body parts, fragments of clothing, personal electronics, pieces of fuselage, and a destroyed wheel rim. Most of the wreckage lay at a depth of about 17 meters. The flight data recorder was retrieved on January 12. The cockpit voice recorder's casing was found on January 15, but its data storage module was missing - it would not be recovered until March 30. On January 21, the search for victims and debris was officially suspended. Sixty-two families had lost someone. Many of the passengers had been residents of West Kalimantan, traveling home.

Indonesia's National Transportation Safety Committee released its preliminary report on February 10, 2021, pointing to the autothrottle asymmetry as a central factor. Investigators sent thirteen aircraft components, including the autothrottle system, to laboratories in the United States and the United Kingdom for examination. Simulation attempts followed: the first, conducted at the Las Vegas Flight Academy in October 2021, could not replicate the accident's asymmetric thrust event. A second session at the NAM Training Center in Jakarta on December 7, 2021, successfully recreated the flight's final moments. The final report, published on November 10, 2022, concluded that the crash resulted from a combination of the faulty autothrottle and pilot error. The thrust lever console had not been closely monitored. The system could have been overridden manually - pilots can fly a 737 without autothrottle - but the crew did not recognize the asymmetry in time. Captain Afwan nearly recovered, managing to level the wings and raise the nose momentarily, but the altitude lost during the inverted dive was unrecoverable.

Flight 182 was the deadliest plane crash of 2021 and the third-deadliest accident involving a Boeing 737-500 in history. It also renewed scrutiny of Indonesia's aviation safety record. The Aviation Safety Network noted that Indonesia had recorded 697 aviation fatalities in the preceding decade alone, making it the deadliest aviation market in the world by that measure. The Indonesian House of Representatives ordered a full evaluation of every airline in the country. Sriwijaya Air, for its part, expanded its Upset Prevention and Recovery Training program, performed fleet-wide autothrottle inspections on its remaining 737s, and revised its maintenance protocols. The Regent of the Thousand Islands announced plans to build a memorial on Lancang Island. On January 22, 2021, families gathered on boats above the crash site and scattered flowers across the water where the plane had gone down. The sea accepted them without comment.