Grim discovery: Debris of the ATR 42-500 turboprop aeroplane at Mount Bulusaraung in South Sulawesi province. — AP
Authorities said they had located the wreckage of a fisheries surveillance plane that went missing in South Sulawesi province on the slope of a fog-covered mountain and had recovered the body of one of the 10 people on board.
The ATR 42-500 turboprop owned by aviation group Indonesia Air Transport (IAT) lost contact with air traffic control on Saturday at about 1.30pm local time around the Maros region in South Sulawesi.
There were seven crew members and three passengers on board the plane, which was chartered by Indonesia’s Marine Affairs and Fisheries Ministry to conduct air surveillance on fisheries. The passengers were ministry staff members.
Authorities had initially said eight crew members were on board but later revised the figure. The plane was flying to Makassar, the capital of South Sulawesi, from Yogyakarta before losing contact.
Yesterday morning, local rescuers found the wreckage in different locations around Mount Bulusaraung in the Maros region, said Andi Sultan, an official at South Sulawesi’s rescue agency. The mountain is roughly 1,500km northeast of the sprawling island nation’s capital, Jakarta.
Rescuers also located other wreckage such as the aircraft engine and passenger seats.
Personnel have been deployed to the locations where the wreckage was discovered, Sultan said, adding the search was hampered by thick fog and mountainous terrain.
Yesterday afternoon, rescuers found a crash victim’s body in a ravine around 200m from Mount Bulusaraung’s peak, Sultan said. The status of the other nine people on board was not yet known.
The head of South Sulawesi’s rescue agency, Muhammad Arif Anwar, had said that after finding the wreckage, the priority was to find the victims and 1,200 personnel would be deployed to search for the missing.
Indonesia’s National Transportation Safety Committee head Soerjanto Tjahjono said based on the agency’s initial findings, the aircraft had crashed into the mountain’s slope.
“We call this controlled flight into terrain. The pilot was able to control the plane and the crash was not intentional,” Soerjanto told local media outlets.
IAT said in a statement that the aircraft had technical problems but it was declared airworthy before flying to Makassar.
“There was a problem with the engineering but we fixed it and tested the plane on Friday, the flight from Halim airport in Jakarta to Semarang and Yogyakarta city went well without a hitch,” said IAT Operations Director Edwin. — Reuters
