Breaking | Missing Indonesian passenger plane carrying 54 people found crashed in remote eastern Papua mountains
An Indonesian passenger plane that went missing yesterday in bad weather with 54 people on board crashed in Indonesia’s rugged eastern Papua region, officials said.
The plane operated by Indonesian carrier Trigana Air lost contact with air traffic control just before 3:00pm local time after taking off from Jayapura, the capital of Papua province, the search and rescue agency said.
The ATR 42-300 turboprop plane was carrying 44 adults, five children and five crew on the flight which was scheduled to take about 45 minutes.
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“The plane has been found (by villagers). According to residents, the flight had crashed into a mountain. Verification is still in process,” said the Indonesian transport ministry’s director-general of air transportation, Suprasetyo, who goes by one name.
The search and rescue agency said the flight left Jayapura about half an hour before it disappeared and was headed to Oksibil, a remote settlement in the mountains south of the provincial capital and only accessible by plane. Ten minutes before it was due to land, the plane contacted Oksibil control tower asking to descend, Captain Beni Sumaryanto, Trigana Air’s service director of operations, said.
But the plane never arrived. Half an hour later, Trigana Air sent another turboprop plane over the same route to look for the missing aircraft, he said, but bad weather forced it to turn back.
He added: “Oksibil is a mountainous area where weather is very unpredictable. It can suddenly turn foggy, dark and windy without warning.
“We strongly suspect it’s a weather issue. It was not overcapacity, as the plane could take 50 passengers.”
Officials were heading to the area to investigate yesterday.
Trigana Air is a small airline established in 1991 that operates domestic services to around 40 destinations in Indonesia. It has suffered 14 serious incidents since it began operations, according to the Aviation Safety Network, which monitors air accidents. The airline is on a blacklist of carriers banned from European Union airspace.
Small aircraft are commonly used for transport in remote, mountainous Papua, and bad weather has caused several accidents in recent years. On Wednesday, a Cessna propeller plane operated by Indonesian company Komala Air crashed in Papua’s Yahukimo district, killing one person and seriously injuring the five others on board.
Indonesia has a patchy aviation safety record. In December an AirAsia plane flying from the Indonesian city of Surabaya to Singapore crashed in the Java Sea, killing everyone on board.
