Indonesian plane with 54 on board missing

The Trigana Air Service plane is at least the third aircraft to go missing in Asia in the the past 18 months.

An Indonesian passenger plane carrying 54 people has lost contact during a flight in the eastern-most province of Papua, the country’s search and research agency said.

An aircraft with 54 people on board crashed in Indonesia’s remote and mountainous region of Papua on Sunday, a government official said, the latest in a string of aviation disasters in the Southeast Asian nation.

The missing plane was seen crashing by villagers in the Okpabe ditrict of Papau.

According to the aircraft’s flight manifest, Capt.Hasanudin’s crew comprised co-pilot Aryadin, mechanic officer Mario and female flight attendants, Ika and Dita. Five children, including three infants, were among the passengers.

Officials suspect that crash was caused by bad weather.

A military transport plane crashed in a residential area of Medan, Sumatra in July, killing more than 140 people including several on the ground.

“It’s mountainous, very remote and the airfield runways are sometimes on the side of a hill, so it is not really an area for the faint-hearted to fly”, aviation analyst Gerry Soejatman told The Guardian.

The agency tweeted: “Because it was night & visibility is limited we suspend search Trigana Air and we continue the search tomorrow morning”.

Meanwhile, some reports cite villagers in the Papua region as having reported a crash.

Transport ministry spokesman JA Barata confirmed the plane had lost contact.

According to figures from the Aviation Safety Network, 14 serious incidents have occurred on Trigana airplanes since the airline began operating in 1991, including the loss of 10 airlines.

The airline is on a blacklist of carriers banned from European Union airspace. Officials said the weather was clear when the plane took off in Jayapura.

That tragedy spurred Indonesia to impose new regulations aimed at improving safety.