Indonesia plane carrying 10 people ‘missing in Sulawesi’

An official at Indonesia’s flight safety agency also confirmed authorities had lost contact with the aircraft with ten people on board.

Air traffic control lost radio contact with the plane about 30 minutes before it was due to land in the provincial capital of Makassar.

Four aircraft were deployed in the search, said Petrus Budi Prasetyo, commercial general manager for the airline.

“It was around 60 nautical miles from Makassar”, ministry spokesperson JR Barata told.

Aviastar flies domestic routes.

Bambang Soelistyo, Search and Rescue Agency chief, told reporters Saturday night that the air search for the Aviastar airline plane in a mountainous area of eastern Sulawesi island had been unsuccessful, and would resume Sunday.

“According to schedule, the plane should have arrived [in Makassar] at 3.35 pm, but it still wasn’t there at 6.05 pm”.

Transportation Ministry spokesman Julius Barata said: “We are still confirming the area where the flight went missing”.

The Associated Press is reporting the aircraft was carrying three crew and seven passengers, including three children. Indonesia has 59 of 63 airlines banned from flying in the European Union as well.

Indonesia has a patchy aviation safety record. Since 2003 Aviastar began operating fix wing aircraft with 2 units of DeHavilland Canada DHC-6-300 Twin Otters and began to drop its rotary wings operations.

A sprawling archipelago Indonesia of almost 250 million people in recent years has been plagued by transportation accidents, that includes train and plane crashes and ferry sinkings.

He cited information from Air Traffic Controller at Masamba’s Andi Jemma Airport as indicating that the pilot had not requested a change in the flight’s altitude from 8,000 feet.