JAKARTA – On Sunday, Indonesian rescuers located debris from a plane that went missing a day earlier, suspected to have crashed with 11 people on board. The aircraft was approaching a mountainous area on Sulawesi island under cloudy weather conditions.
The turboprop ATR 42-500 departed from Yogyakarta on Java island, heading for Makassar, the capital of South Sulawesi province. It disappeared from radar on Saturday after air traffic control instructed it to adjust its approach alignment.
Operated by Indonesia Air Transport, the aircraft was last detected at 1:17 p.m. in the Leang-Leang region of Maros, a mountainous district in South Sulawesi. Among those on board were eight crew members and three passengers from the Marine Affairs and Fisheries Ministry, involved in a maritime surveillance mission.
On Sunday morning, a rescue team aboard an air force helicopter identified what seemed to be a small plane window in a forested area on Mount Bulusaraung’s slopes, according to Muhammad Arif Anwar, head of Makassar’s Search and Rescue Office. Ground teams later uncovered larger portions of debris, believed to be parts of the main fuselage and tail, scattered across a steep northern slope, Anwar shared during a press briefing.
“Finding the main sections of the aircraft greatly reduces the search area and provides vital information for focusing our efforts,” stated Anwar. “Our combined search and rescue teams are now concentrating on locating victims, particularly any survivors.”
Rescue teams, both on the ground and in the air, continued to converge on the crash site on Sunday, despite encountering strong winds, thick fog, and challenging terrain, reported Maj. Gen. Bangun Nawoko, the military commander for South Sulawesi’s Hasanuddin region.
Photos and videos released by the National Search and Rescue Agency on Sunday showed rescuers were trekking along a steep, narrow mountain ridgeline blanketed in thick fog to reach scattered wreckage.
Indonesia relies heavily on air transport and ferries to connect its over 17,000 islands. The Southeast Asian country has been plagued by transportation accidents in recent years, from plane and bus crashes to ferry sinkings.
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