Indonesian villagers find wreckage missing plane

mangaloretoday.com

Indonesia, Aug 18:  Villagers have found the wreckage of a plane that disappeared with 54 people on board in the province of Papua.

Trigana flight IL267 failed to arrive in Oksibil from Sentani as scheduled after contact was lost in poor weather 33 minutes after take-off.

The internal flight, which had 44 adults, five children and five crew on board, would normally take 45 minutes.

 

"The latest information is that the Trigana aircraft that lost contact has been found at Camp 3, Ok Bape district in the Bintang Mountains regency," air transportation director general Suprasetyo told reporters.

"Residents provided information that the aircraft crashed into Tangok mountain."

It is not yet known whether anyone survived.

There is no indication the pilot made a distress call, a government spokesman said.

The search was suspended due to nightfall, but 150 local rescuers reportedly made their way to the scene.

The ATR-42 plane was built in France and Italy.

The Aviation Safety Network claims the plane is 27 years old and Trigana has had 14 serious incidents since it began operating in 1991, writing off 10 aircraft.

In 2009, a Merpati flight also went missing on Jayapura-Oksibil route. It had crashed into a mountain and was discovered after two days.

The latest incident comes eight months after an  AirAsia plane crashed on its way from Surabaya in Indonesia to Singapore, killing all 162 people on board.

This prompted the Indonesian government to impose new regulations to improve safety.

The Trigana Air Service is one of many Indonesian airlines banned from operating in the European Union for safety reasons.