Indonesian airliner still missing, says official

MAKASSAR, Indonesia, Jan 2 (Reuters) An Indonesian air force official today said reports that an airliner with 102 people on board had been found on Sulawesi island were wrong, and that the plane was still missing.

Officials had earlier said that wreckage of the Adam Air plane had been found after it had crashed into the mountains in heavy rain. There were reports 12 people had survived the crash.

''The location has not been found. We apologise that the news that we conveyed was not true,'' said First Air Marshal Eddy Suyanto, commander of Hasanuddin air base in Makassar.

The Adam Air plane lost contact with the ground yesterday about an hour before it was due to land in Manado in North Sulawesi, the transport ministry said.

There were 96 passengers and six crew on board the plane. A copy of the plane's manifest showed three passengers as non-Indonesians.

The United States embassy in Jakarta confirmed they were Americans.

Suyanto earlier told Radio Elshinta an air force plane had spotted the wreckage of the Boeing 737-400.

''The plane was found around 20 km from Polewali (town) in the mountains. The weather is clear,'' Suyanto had said.

Air travel in Indonesia, home to 220 million people, has grown substantially since the liberalisation of the airline industry after the Asian financial crisis in the late 1990s, which enabled privately owned budget airlines to operate.

REUTERS SY BD1722