Wreckage of missing Indonesian airliner found

MAKASSAR, Indonesia, Jan 11 (Reuters) Pieces of an Indonesian airliner that vanished with 102 people on board have been found strewn in the ocean, officials said today, after a painstaking 10-day search from jungles to stormy seas.

The biggest part, found by a fisherman, appeared to be a tail stabiliser, while shreds of a wing, a life vest and seat tables were also recovered by residents, military and police in the sea and on beaches near the town of Pare Pare on the west coast of Sulawesi island, an official heading the search said.

The identity of a woman whose body was recovered in the vicinity was still being investigated, Eddy Suyanto also said.

Exhausted relatives expressed relief that they finally had firm news on the plane, even if the news was not good, after a long wait and an erroneous report that the airliner had crashed in the jungle and some people had survived.

''I still hope that they are found alive but I have to accept all kind of conditions,'' Lusy Kembuan told Metro TV. She had 17 relatives on the plane, including her husband and children.

The Adam Air Boeing 737-400 was heading from Surabaya in East Java to Manado in northern Sulawesi when it vanished in bad weather on New Year's Day. The plane made no distress call, although the pilot had reported concerns over the weather.

Suyanto, who has been coordinating search efforts from an air base in the South Sulawesi capital, Makassar, said the hunt aided by soldiers had focused on Pare Pare and its surroundings.

''Ten pieces have been found clearly to belong to the Adam Air plane. Five table boards, two shreds of the wings and the rest from interior covers and other small pieces,'' he told a news conference.

Earlier, officials had displayed the slightly scratched white stabiliser of about 1 metre in length found yesterday.

Two flight attendant seats were also found on a beach today in the same general area, search and rescue official Immal Yuhani told Reuters.

Genot Hardianto, the chief of police at Pare Pare, about 100 km north of Makassar, also said that an ID card, a flare and a headrest had been found.

CRASHED INTO THE SEA Suyanto said Indonesian navy ships and aircraft were also searching the Makassar Strait, focusing on an area off the town of Majene, where a ship had detected metal objects.

Asked if there was an initial assumption that the jet crashed into the sea off Majene, he said: ''Yes, but I cannot make any conclusion.'' He added he believed the plane disintegrated into small pieces, but declined to say whether this could have happened before or after slamming into the sea.

Wahyu Supriantono, the chief of the Indonesian Plane Technicians group, told Reuters the plane appeared likely to have crashed into the sea because if a mid-air explosion had occurred fragments would have been spread in a wider area and found earlier.

In a Makassar hotel where relatives of the Adam Air passengers have been staying, Rosmala Dewi, mother of a flight attendant on the plane, told reporters: ''I feel a bit relieved if it is true that the search team has found that piece. We have waited so long, and we have received so many confusing reports. We do not know whether to go home or stay here forever.'' Pare Pare is about 150 km (90 miles) south of Mamuju in west Sulawesi, which had been the main focus of the search since Monday when Indonesian ships detected large metal objects on the sea bed.

At the site further north where the objects were detected, a US Navy oceanographic ship, the Mary Sears, was helping in the search but had yet to determine if the objects were wreckage.

The plane vanished less than three days after a ferry with more than 600 aboard capsized and sank off Java. Survivors of that accident were still being found nine days later hundreds of kilometres away, indicating the power of ocean currents in parts of Indonesian waters.

REUTERS SB VV1755