Search on for plane carrying 102 in Indonesia

JAKARTA, Jan 2 (Reuters) Indonesia focused search and rescue efforts on Sulawesi island and nearby waters today after an Adam Air Boeing 737-400 plane went missing with 96 passengers and six crew on board.

The plane lost contact with the ground yesterday about an hour before it was due to land in Manado in North Sulawesi, Tatang Ikhsan, director general at the transport ministry, said.

At Jakarta's main commercial airport, where the flight began its journey, taxi driver Oswald Mamalani told Reuters his younger sister and her child were aboard the plane.

''When I arrived home, I got a phone call from a relative in Manado asking me to pray ... for the safety of my sister,'' he said. ''So far I feel that my sister is still alive.'' The disappearance of the plane came two days after the sinking of an Indonesian ferry, more than 400 of whose passengers were still unaccounted for.

A copy of the missing plane's manifest made available to reporters showed three passengers as non-Indonesians, but did not indicate their nationalities.

An official said efforts to reach the plane's co-pilot by mobile telephone indicated it was on the ground rather than in the sea, where the telephone would be unlikely to work.

''There was a ring tone, but no answer,'' said Abdul Gani, a Search and Rescue duty officer at Makassar, capital of the region from where a distress signal was picked up by satellite.

Speaking to Reuters by telephone, Gani said the signal indicated the plane might be in a mountainous area.

The flight had taken off from a stopover in Surabaya on Java island and was scheduled to land about two hours later in Manado.

Ikhsan said the satellite had detected the distress signal 83 miles (154 km) northwest of Makassar, the capital of South Sulawesi province, 1,400 km (870 miles) east of Jakarta.

''We call on other flights which crossed this route to provide information on any distress signal,'' he said.

Transport Minister Hatta Rajasa said the plane had been sighted by another plane above the Mamuju forest on Sulawesi.

''Let's hope it made an emergency landing,'' he told Elshinta radio, adding that rescuers had been sent to the area.

WEATHER WARNING First Marshal Eddy Suyanto, commander of Hasanuddin air base in Makassar, said that search teams had been sent by road late on Monday to sites where the plane may have gone down and aircraft would join the search at daylight.

''There will be... one Boeing to find information, two planes from air force search and rescue, (and) two planes from the national search and rescue agency,'' he told Elshinta.

''Navy, the police, army and civilians will also help in this search.'' Adam Air said it was sending a team on one of its Boeing 737-300s to join in the search around Mamuju in western Sulawesi, airline official Hartono told Reuters.

The transport ministry's Ikhsan said the missing plane was airworthy and last serviced in December 2005. It has 45,371 flying hours and, according to Adam Air, the 17-year-old aircraft's engines are CFM56-3C1 models made by General Electric.

An Adam Air Boeing 737-300 plane was forced to make an emergency landing in February after a navigational failure caused the pilot to lose contact with its destination airport.

One of about a dozen budget airlines in the world's fourth most populous nation, Adam Air operates 19 Boeing 737s.

Established in 2002, it serves dozens of domestic routes and also flies to Singapore. In January a newspaper report said Adam Air was planning a share listing in Singapore for 2008.

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 DH VP0600