Indonesia widens search for missing plane

MAKASSAR, Indonesia, Jan 5 (Reuters) Indonesia has widened the hunt around Sulawesi island for a plane carrying 102 people which disappeared in bad weather without trace five days ago, an air force commander said today.

The search had been concentrated in areas of western Sulawesi from where emergency signals were received on Monday, when the plane went missing with no mayday call from the pilot.

In what officials said was his last conversation with air traffic control in Makassar, the pilot said the flight had encountered crosswinds and needed safe coordinates. Radar continued to track the flight for some time after that.

First Air Marshal Eddy Suyanto from the airbase in Makassar, Sulawesi's largest city, told Reuters that new search areas would include sites further to the north and east.

''Today we widen our scope because we did not find anything in the area covered by emergency signals,'' he said.

However, by late afternoon today, there was still no report of success in the search.

The North Sulawesi provincial capital, Manado, was the destination of the 17-year-old Boeing 737-400, operated by Indonesian budget carrier Adam Air.

Rain, winds and clouds have compounded the difficulty of searching in rugged and forested mountainous terrain.

The weather was fair in Makassar today, but a Reuters photographer aboard a navy plane said a rainstorm and whirlwinds in western Sulawesi forced the aircraft to zig-zag.

Officials said at least four Indonesian fixed-wing military planes, a Singapore air force Fokker-50 and a helicopter were looking for the missing airliner along with army and police ground teams and civilian and navy ships.

Later today, Suyanto told Reuters more foreign help might be sought because efforts so far had yielded no results.

Government officials had to apologise after erroneously saying on Tuesday that wreckage of the plane, carrying 96 passengers -- including three Americans -- and six crew, had been found and that 12 people had survived.

AIRLINE BOOM A Singapore satellite picked up distress signals from the plane on Monday and relayed them to Jakarta because the world's fourth-most-populous country lacked the equipment, said Ikhsan Tatang, a senior official at Indonesia's transport ministry.

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