Indonesia finds wreckage of missing surveillance plane, one body

JAKARTA – Indonesian authorities said on Jan 18 they had located the wreckage of a fisheries surveillance plane that went missing in South Sulawesi province on the slope of a fog-covered mountain and had recovered the body of one of the 10 people on board.

The ATR 42-500 turboprop owned by aviation group Indonesia Air Transport (IAT) lost contact with air traffic control on Jan 17 at about 1.30pm local time, around the Maros region in South Sulawesi.

There were seven crew members and three passengers on board the plane, which was chartered by Indonesia’s Marine Affairs and Fisheries Ministry to conduct air surveillance on fisheries. The passengers were ministry staff members.

Authorities initially said eight crew members were on board but later revised the figure. The plane was flying to Makassar, capital of South Sulawesi, from Yogyakarta before losing contact..

On the morning of Jan 18, local rescuers found the wreckage in different locations around Mount Bulusaraung in the Maros region, said Mr Andi Sultan, an official at South Sulawesi’s rescue agency. The mountain is roughly 1,500km north-east of Jakarta.

“Our helicopter crews have seen the debris of the plane’s window at 7.46am,” he told reporters.

“And around 7.49am, we discovered large parts of the aircraft, suspected to be the fuselage of the plane,” he said. The tail of the plane was seen at the bottom of the mountain slope.

Rescuers have also located other wreckage such as the aircraft engine and passenger seats.

Personnel has been deployed to the locations where the wreckage was discovered, Mr Sultan added, with search hampered by thick fog and mountainous terrain.

On the afternoon of Jan 18, rescuers found a victim’s body in a ravine around 200m from Mount Bulusaraung’s peak, he said. The status of the other nine people on board was not yet known.

The head of South Sulawesi’s rescue agency, Mr Muhammad Arif Anwar, said after finding the wreckage, the priority was to locate the victims and 1,200 personnel would be deployed.

Crash cause still undetermined

Indonesia’s National Transportation Safety Committee (KNKT) head Soerjanto Tjahjono said, based on the agency’s initial findings, the aircraft crashed into the mountain’s slope.

“We call this controlled flight into terrain. The pilot was able to control the plane and the crash was not intentional,” he told local media outlets.

Investigators have yet to determine the cause of the crash, he added.

KNKT did not respond to Reuters’ request for comment.

IAT said in a statement that the aircraft had technical problems, but it was declared airworthy before flying to Makassar.

“There was a problem with the engineering, but we have fixed it and tested the plane on Friday, the flight from Halim airport in Jakarta to Semarang and Yogyakarta city went well without a hitch,” said IAT Operations Director Edwin.

Aviation experts say most accidents are caused by a combination of factors.

The ATR 42-500, manufactured by Franco-Italian firm ATR, can carry between 42 and 50 passengers.

Flight tracking website Flightradar24 said on X that the plane was flying over the ocean at a low altitude so its tracking coverage was limited. The last signal was received at 4.20am GMT (12.30pm Singapore time) about 20km north-east of Makassar airport.

This was the first deadly ATR 42 crash in Indonesia in more than a decade. In 2015, a Trigana Air Service ATR 42-300 crashed into a mountainside in the Papua region, killing all 54 people on board. REUTERS