Indonesian Adam Air plane damaged in hard landing

JAKARTA, Feb 21 (Reuters) A passenger jet operated by Indonesia's Adam Air -- subject to world attention after one of its planes disappeared in January -- made a hard landing today that cracked its body, the airline and media said.

All 148 passengers were safe, the budget carrier said in a statement, but the accident prompted the temporary closure of Juanda Airport in Surabaya, Indonesia's second-largest city and the capital of East Java province.

The incident came amid heavy rain.

The state Antara news agency said the plane's body bent and cracked. Photos showed the body of the plane, a Boeing 737-300, bent at the middle with its tail near the ground.

''The plane made a hard landing but did not crash,'' Susanti Dewi, an official at Adam Air told Reuters, declining to give further comment.

On January 1 an Adam Air Boeing 737-400 with 102 people on board disappeared from radar screens during a flight from Surabaya to Manado in North Sulawesi island.

No bodies have been found despite the discovery of debris of the plane in the sea off South Sulawesi.

The accident sparked widespread discussion of Indonesian aviation safety standards generally and at Adam Air specifically, and President Susilo Bambang Yudhoyono set up a commission to investigate transport safety.

Adam Air said the latest incident was caused by a strong wind amid heavy rain at the airport, and that the plane had undergone thorough checks before flying.

The accident prompted some passengers to cancel flights with the carrier, Elshinta radio reported.

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.

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 PDM HT1848