Indonesia plane with 54 people on board found crashed

A Trigana Air Service's ATR42-300 twin turboprop plane takes off at Supadio airport in Pontianak, Indonesia in 2010. The same type of aeroplane is believed to have crashed carrying 54 people on Sunday. Photo: AP

Jakarta: August 16  The wreckage of a passenger plane which went missing with 54 people aboard in rugged eastern Indonesia today has been found by villagers, an official said, in the latest fatal accident to hit the country's aviation sector.

The plane operated by Indonesian carrier Trigana Air lost contact with air traffic control just before 3 pm (11.30 am IST) after taking off from Jayapura, the capital of Papua province, the search and rescue agency said.

The ATR 42-300 twin-turboprop plane built in France and Italy, was carrying 44 adult passengers, five crew, two children and three babies on the flight, which was scheduled to take about 45 minutes, it said. 

Sito, an officer from search and rescue agency BASARNAS in Jayapura, said all 54 people on board were Indonesians.

President Joko Widodo tweeted his condolences to the victims of the accident. "Let us pray together," he said.xxxx

Ten minutes before it was due to land, the plane contacted Oksibil control tower asking to descend, Captain Beny 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.

On his Facebook page, Mr Joko posted a report from the minister of transport. It said according to Ludi, the head of the search and rescue agency in the Papuan provincial capital of Jayapura, the missing flight had been located at camp three in the Ogbape district of the Bingang mountain regency.

"Locals have informed us that the flight crashed on to Mount Tangok," the update said. Evacuation teams from the natural disaster mitigating agency, along with army officers and police personnel from Oksibil were on their way to the accident scene, it said.

"The plane has been found (by villagers). According to residents, the flight had crashed into a mountain," said the transport ministry's director-general of air transportation, Suprasetyo, who goes by one name.

Officials were still verifying the information from local residents, he said. There was no information about whether anyone may have survived. 

"The weather is currently very bad there, it's very dark and cloudy. It's not conducive for a search. The area is mountainous."

According to the Aviation Safety Network, an online database, the ATR 42-300 had its first flight 27 years ago. ATR is a joint venture between Airbus and Alenia Aermacchi, a subsidiary of Italian aerospace firm Finmeccanica.

Airline blacklisted in Europe

Trigana has been on the EU blacklist of banned carriers since 2007. Airlines on the list are barred from operating in European airspace due to either concerns about its safety standards, or concerns about the regulatory environment in its country of registration.

Trigana has had 14 serious incidents since it began operations in 1991, according to the Aviation Safety Network's online database. Excluding this latest incident, it has written off 10 aircraft.

Indonesia has a patchy aviation safety record and has seen two major plane crashes in the past year, including an AirAsia flight that went down in the Java Sea, killing all on board.

That crash prompted the government to introduce regulations aimed at improving safety.

Indonesia's president promised a review of the ageing air force fleet in July after a military transport plane crashed in the north of the country, killing more than 100 people. — AFP