Ferry carrying 243 capsizes in Java Sea off Borneo, killing six and leaving 136 missing

A roll-on, roll-off passenger ferry carrying 243 people capsized in the Java Sea before dawn on Sunday during an overnight crossing from Java to Borneo, killing at least six passengers and leaving 136 others unaccounted for by nightfall, Indonesia's transportation ministry said. The vessel, the KMP Virgo Transport 8, lost contact with its shipping line in the early hours after its captain radioed that the ferry was listing in rough weather, with waves reported at up to three meters, according to Al Jazeera.

Search aircraft later located the ferry floating upside down roughly 80 nautical miles from Banjarmasin, the South Kalimantan port it had been due to reach. Transportation Minister Dudy Purwagandhi told reporters at a command post set up at Banjarmasin's Trisakti Port that aerial surveillance showed the hull had not sunk, which officials said improved the odds that people trapped in air pockets inside could still be found alive. Indonesia's national search-and-rescue agency, Basarnas, dispatched ships, a helicopter and fixed-wing aircraft from Surabaya and Banjarmasin to comb the area through the day.

The toll so far

By evening, 107 people had been pulled from the water alive and six bodies had been recovered, according to a statement from the transportation ministry, leaving 136 of the 243 people listed on the ship's manifest still missing. The manifest recorded 213 passengers and 30 crew. The ferry had departed Surabaya's Tanjung Perak port on Saturday morning bound for Banjarmasin, a crossing that normally takes roughly a day, and lost contact in the Java Sea in the early hours of Sunday after reporting it was taking on a dangerous list. Casualty figures have shifted through the day as evacuees were counted at Trisakti Port, a pattern typical of a fast-moving rescue, and officials cautioned the numbers could still change as the search continues.

An aging ferry on a well-worn but risky crossing

The Surabaya–Banjarmasin route is one of the principal sea links between Java, Indonesia's most populous island, and Kalimantan, the Indonesian portion of Borneo, carrying migrant workers, traders and families who rely on overnight ferries rather than costlier flights. The Virgo Transport 8 itself was not new: the 119-meter vessel was built in Japan in 1987 and operated there before it was sold last year to its current Indonesian operator, PT Virgo Karya Shipping, and reflagged. Indonesian officials said the ship had been cleared to sail based on forecasts from the country's weather agency, the Meteorology, Climatology and Geophysics Agency's maritime forecast for the waters it crossed, before conditions worsened overnight.

The disaster is the latest in a long run of ferry accidents in Indonesian waters, an archipelago of more than 17,000 islands where aging vessels, informal passenger counts and sudden squalls have repeatedly proven a lethal combination. In July 2025, another domestic ferry, the KMP Tunu Pratama Jaya, sank in the Bali Strait less than half an hour after leaving port, killing several people and leaving dozens missing before a multi-day search recovered most of those aboard. Indonesian lawmakers have pointed to that earlier disaster and others like it as evidence that safety inspections and passenger manifests on the country's inter-island ferry fleet have not kept pace with demand on routes such as the Java–Kalimantan crossing, which carries far more traffic than the roads and limited flight connections between the two islands.

Families wait at the docks

Officials opened a joint command post at Trisakti Port where relatives could register missing passengers and await word of survivors as evacuees were brought ashore by naval and Basarnas vessels throughout the day. Rescue crews described the conditions at sea as hazardous even for the vessels sent to help. I Putu Sudayana, head of the local search-and-rescue office in Banjarmasin, said the swells that had capsized the ferry also endangered the rescue fleet.

"It is extremely risky for vessels. Even our Basarnas vessel, which is 40 metres long, is at great risk," Sudayana said.

Many of those aboard were traveling for work or family reasons between the two islands, a crossing that remains one of the cheapest ways to move between Java and Kalimantan, and one used heavily around weekends by laborers, small traders and students. Hospitals in Banjarmasin took in survivors requiring treatment for exposure and minor injuries, while others were reunited with relatives at the port after hours adrift or awaiting rescue on the capsized hull. The government has not released a full breakdown of the passengers' origins, and identifying the dead and missing was still under way as families supplied photographs and descriptions of relatives to officials at the command post.

What happens next

Minister Dudy said search and evacuation remained the immediate priority and that determining the cause of the capsizing would fall to Indonesia's National Transportation Safety Committee, the independent body that investigates maritime, aviation and rail accidents, rather than to the ministry itself. Lawmakers on the House of Representatives' Commission V, which oversees transportation, said they would summon ministry officials, the harbor authority and the ferry's operator to account for the accident and pressed the ministry to take emergency steps on oversight of aging vessels and passenger manifests. Deputy speakers of the chamber called for a full investigation into what caused the ferry to capsize so quickly after its distress call.

Basarnas said search operations, involving vessels, a helicopter and aircraft, would continue through the night and into Monday as long as the chance of finding survivors remained. NPR reported that rescuers were racing to reach any remaining air pockets inside the capsized hull before conditions or time made that impossible. The government has not yet said when regular ferry service on the Surabaya–Banjarmasin route will resume, and the fate of the Virgo Transport 8 itself — whether it can be righted and salvaged or will need to be cut apart to reach anyone still trapped inside — remained undetermined as of Sunday night.

Minister Dudy said the ministry would defer to the safety committee's findings before drawing conclusions about the operator, PT Virgo Karya Shipping, or the vessel's condition, telling reporters the government did not want to get ahead of an investigation still in its earliest hours. For families still waiting at Trisakti Port, though, the immediate concern remained the fate of relatives who had not been accounted for by the time officials closed out Sunday's briefing, with the search set to resume at first light.