A search plane early Monday spotted the wreckage of an airliner that vanished Sunday in a remote, mountainous region of Indonesia with 54 people aboard.
Officials said the wreckage was spotted about seven miles from its destination. Henry Bambang Soelistyo, 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.
“Smoke was still billowing from the wreckage when it was spotted by a plane search,” said Soelistyo who is leading the rescue operation from Sentani Airport in Jayapura, adding that bad weather and rugged terrain were hampering efforts to reach the wreckage located in a mountainous area at an altitude of about 8,500 feet.
He said elite forces from the Air Force and Army will build a helipad for evacuation purposes near the crash site.
Indonesian Air Transportation Director General Suprasetyo said the plane was found Sunday by villagers who said it crashed into a mountain in Papua, the nation’s largest and most eastern province. The fate of the 49 passengers — including five children — and crew of five was not immediately known, he said.
“Residents provided information that the aircraft crashed into Tangok mountain,” Suprasetyo said.
The crash was the third catastrophe for the Southeast Asian nation‘s beleaguered air transportation system in less than a year.
The Transportation Ministry said the Trigana Air Service flight lost contact 33 minutes into a 42-minute flight from the provincial capital of Jayapura bound for the city of Oksibil. There was no indication of a distress call from the French-built ATR 42-300 twin turboprop plane, the ministry said.
Heavy rain, high winds and some fog were reported in the area around the time the plane disappeared. Papua is home to miles-high mountains, sheer cliffs and dense rain forests.
ref:Usatoday
