54 feared dead after wreckage of missing Indonesian plane found in mountains

Heronimus Guru, the deputy operational officer of the National Search and Rescue Agency, told reporters the approximate location of the wreckage is 7 nautical miles southwest from oksibil.

“Officials were still verifying the information from local residents, he said”.

Airline officials were not immediately available to respond to questions from Reuters.

Transportation Ministry spokesman J.A. Barata said the airliner left Sentani Airport in Jayapura at approximately 2:22 p.m. and was scheduled to make its landing in Oksibil at about 3:16 p.m. By 2:55 p.m., the plane lost contact.

Henry Bambang Soelistyo looks at a map during a search operation for the missing Trigana Air Service flight “Our colleagues carry those bags to be handed out directly to poor people over there”, he said. Also on the plane was 6.5 billion rupiah (USD 470,000) in cash, which were government funds being transported by postal officials for distribution to poor families, according to the head of the Jayapura post office. The site is about 14 kilometers (9 miles) from the airport where the plane was supposed to land.

Indonesian President Joko Widodo has expressed his condolences on Twitter and called for the country to “pray together” for the victims.

Papua, which is Indonesia’s most easterly region, is made up of mostly dense jungle and mountains.

He described the mountain, Mount Tangok, as “not very tall”, adding that when the plane crashed, it was probably 10 minutes away from the Oksibil airport. The weather has been known to change dramatically, making flying over the area risky.

The terrain in the region 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.

All aboard were Indonesian nationals, officials have said.

There have been two major air disasters in the past year in Indonesia.

Trigana Air Service is one of a large number of airlines banned from operating in European airspace “because they are found to be unsafe and, or they are not sufficiently overseen by their authorities”, according to the European Commission.

In December, an AirAsia plane crashed in the Java Sea en route from Surabaya, Indonesia, to Singapore, killing all 162 people aboard.

An Indonesian passenger plane carrying 54 people has been found crashed in a mountainous part of the country.