Search underway for plane carrying 102 in Indonesia

By Staff
|
Google Oneindia News

JAKARTA, Jan 1 (Reuters) Indonesia focused rescue efforts on Sulawesi island today after an Adam Air Boeing 737-400 plane went missing with 96 passengers and six crew on board.

Contact with the plane was lost today when it was at an altitude of 35,000 feet, about an hour before it was due to land in Manado in North Sulawesi, said Tatang Ikhsan, director general at the transport ministry.

Ikhsan said on Elshinta radio the flight had originated in Jakarta with a stop in Surabaya on Java island. It had left Surabaya at 1 pm (1130 IST) and had been scheduled to land just over two hours later in Manado.

At a news conference late today, he said a Singapore satellite had picked up a distress signal from a plane 83 nautical miles northwest of Makassar, the capital of South Sulawesi province, 1,400 km 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 above the Mamuju forest on Sulawesi.

''(It was) preliminary information from a plane flying above it. It will be the first clue for SAR (Search and Rescue) to move to the area,'' he told Elshinta radio, adding that rescuers had already been ordered to go.

''Let's hope it made an emergency landing,'' he said.

First Marshall Eddy Suyanto, commander of Hasanuddin air base in Makassar, told Metro television: ''We have contacted related agencies and several groups have travelled by road to locations where we think the plane might have gone down but so far there has not been any information.'' WEATHER WARNING The transport ministry's Ikhsan said the plane was airworthy and last serviced in December 2005. It has 45,371 flying hours.

''The weather conditions all over our country are not very good. We have notified all airlines... All flights should have received complete information,'' he said.

Much of Indonesia was cloudy with rainfall today.

An Adam Air Boeing 737-300 plane was forced to make an emergency landing in February at a small airport in East Nusa Tenggara province after a navigational failure caused the pilot to lose contact with the destination airport in Makassar.

Adam Air, one of about a dozen budget airlines in the world's fourth most populous nation, operates 19 Boeing 737 jets. It serves dozens of domestic routes in Indonesia and also flies to Singapore.

Adam Air's website says its 737-400s are capable of carrying 170 passengers, with a maximum cruising speed of 912 km/hour and maximum range of 3,850 km.

The airline was established by two Indonesians, Agung Laksono, the speaker of the house of representatives, who is chairman of the company, and Sandra Ang, in 2002 and commenced operations on Dec. 19, 2003.

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 LL VP0008

For Daily Alerts
Get Instant News Updates
Enable
x
Notification Settings X
Time Settings
Done
Clear Notification X
Do you want to clear all the notifications from your inbox?
Settings X
X