Indonesia Passenger Plane Wreckage Spotted In Papua Mountains
A search plane has spotted the wreckage of an Indonesian passenger plane that went missing with 54 people onboard. There was no immediate word if there were any survivors from the crash, which happened in bad weather on Sunday in Indonesia’s mountainous easternmost province of Papua.
The Trigana Air Service plane was flying from Papua’s provincial capital, Jayapura, to the Papua city of Oksibil when it lost contact with Oksibil’s airport. Transportation Ministry spokesman Julius Barata said there was no indication that the pilot had made a distress call.
Oksibil, which is 175 miles south of Jayapura, was experiencing heavy rain, strong winds and fog when the plane lost contact with the airport minutes before it was scheduled to land, said Susanto, the head of Papua’s search and rescue agency.
Wreckage of missing Indonesian plane spotted
Officials said the wreckage was spotted about 12 kilometers (7 miles) from Oksibil, and Henry Bambang Soelistyo, the chief of the National Search and Rescue Agency, said search and rescue teams were preparing to try to reach the crash site by air and foot.
Search planes went into the air early Monday after residents of a village not far from Oksibil told local police that they saw a plane flying low before crashing into a mountain, said Ludiyanto, who heads the search and rescue operation from Jayapura. Ludiyanto, like many Indonesians goes by one name.
Local media reports said all the passengers are Indonesians. The airline has not released a passenger manifest.
Crashed Indonesian plane was carrying nearly $500,000 in cash
Indonesia’s postal office has told that the plane was carrying four bags containing cash, about 6.5 billion rupiah ($486,000; £300,000), for villagers living in remote places in Papua.
“Our colleagues carry those bags to be handed out directly to poor people over there,” said the head of Jayapura’s post office, Haryono, who goes by only his first name.
Trigana Air has had 14 serious incidents since it began operations in 1991, losing 10 aircraft in the process. Indonesia has suffered two major air disasters in the past year.
Last December an AirAsia plane crashed in the Java Sea, killing all 192 people on board – and in July a military transport plane crashed in a residential area of Medan, Sumatra claiming 140 lives.