Searchers spot wreckage of missing Indonesia passenger plane

Residents found two metal pieces that might have come from the aircraft that went missing with 54 people on board in Indonesia’s remote Papua province, a military official said Monday.

The ATR 42-300 turboprop operated by Indonesia’s Trigana Air took off Sunday from Jayapura, but crashed in bad weather conditions during a flight that was due to last mere 42 minutes.

There were 44 adult passengers, five children and infants and five crew on the Trigana short-haul flight from Sentani Airport in Jayapura, capital of Papua, south to Oksibil.

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 said at the weekend that villagers had seen a plane crashing into a mountain not far from Oksibil, and had found wreckage.

The plane crashed in a rugged, mountainous region at an altitude of about 8,500 feet, which makes reaching the plane hard.

Indonesian searchers believe they have located debris from an airliner that crashed in a mountainous area with 54 people on board, Reports CNN.

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.

Local media reports said all the passengers are Indonesians.

Trigana Air is a small airline established in 1991 that operates domestic services to around 40 destinations in Indonesia.

Julius Barata, transport ministry spokesperson, confirmed the disappearance and added: “We are not sure what happened to the plane yet and we are co-ordinating with local authorities.”

It was bound for Oksibil when it lost contact with air traffick control.

A second search plane has been dispatched to verify the debris spotted Monday, Col. I Made Susila Adyana, an Indonesian Air Force official in Papua, told the national news agency Antara.

After Indonesia deregulated its aviation industry in the 1990s, dozens of airlines emerged making air travel affordable for the first time for many in the world’s fourth most populous nation. AirAsia Flight QZ8501 crashed in the Java Sea while en route from Surabaya to Singapore in December.

Before Sunday’s crash, the airline had been involved in 19 serious safety incidents since 1992, according to Flightglobal, a website that tracks the global aviation industry.