Indonesia Plane Wreck Found, Land Search Team en Route to Papua
TEHRAN (Tasnim) - Indonesian authorities said the wreckage of a Trigana Air Service PT flight with 54 people on board was found on Bintang mountain in Indonesia’s Papua region, and a land search team was going to the area to check for survivors.
A Trigana Air pilot spotted the wreckage in the “area that we suspected last night,” Ludi Yanto, head of the Jayapura Search and Rescue Office, said by telephone Monday, Bloomberg reported.
Flight IL267 lost contact with air traffic controllers on Sunday amid cloudy weather. The plane was flying to Oksibil from Sentani in Jayapura, Indonesia, on a domestic flight.
“The weather was clear when the airplane took off, but 10 minutes before it was to land, it became cloudy and the airport wasn’t visible due to heavy clouds,” Raymond Konstantin, the search and rescue office’s operations officer, said by phone Sunday. “Maybe they could no longer see the airport. Weather can change very fast in the mountains.”
The missing plane brought aviation safety in Asia back into focus after a spate of crashes in the past two years. In December, a plane belonging to the Indonesian unit of AirAsia Bhd. crashed into the ocean, killing all 162 people on board.
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Last year, Malaysia Airlines lost two planes, while Taipei- based TransAsia Airways Corp. has suffered two fatal crashes in the past two years. Trigana is on a list of airlines banned in the European Union.
Authorities are sending cars to inspect Okbape village, near Oksibil, after locals said they saw an airplane flying in that direction, Konstantin said. The village is accessible by land and the search team will scour the mountainous region by foot from there. Yanto said his team hasn’t yet reached the area.
Sentani is located below the equator, about 5,400 kilometers (3,300 miles) east of Jakarta.
The terrain is best compared to the Amazon basin—aggressive, inhospitable and unnavigable by foot, according to a September risk report by aviation consulting firm Martin Consulting Llc. Indonesian Papua and Papua New Guinea are among the world’s highest-risk aviation regions, according to the report.
The plane took off at 2:22 pm Papua time, which is two hours ahead of Jakarta, and was scheduled to arrive in Oksibil at 3:04 pm. The flight lost contact with the Oksibil tower at 2:55 pm.
The turboprop plane, made by France’s Avions de Transport Regional, was carrying 44 adult passengers, five children and infants and had five crew members, Indonesia’s Basarnas search agency said on its Twitter account. There was no indication that the pilot had made a distress call, the Associated Press reported, citing transport ministry spokesman J.A. Barata.
The aging plane made its first flight 27 years ago, according to Aviation Safety Net, a website that collects information about airline accidents.
“ATR acknowledges the reported loss of contact of flight TGN267 Trigana Air Service and is standing by to support the relevant aviation authorities,” the planemaker said in a statement.
