JAKARTA – Indonesian authorities said on Jan 18 they had located the wreckage of a fisheries surveillance plane that went missing in South Sulawesi province near a fog-covered mountain, and were searching for the 11 people on board.
The ATR 42-500 turboprop owned by aviation group Indonesia Air Transport lost contact with air traffic control on Jan 17 at about 1.30pm local time, around the Maros region in South Sulawesi.
There were eight 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.
The head of South Sulawesi’s rescue agency, Mr Muhammad Arif Anwar, said on local television that after finding the wreckage, the rescuers would deploy 1,200 personnel to search for the missing passengers and crew.
“Our priority is to search for the victims, and we hope that there are some that we can evacuate safely,” he added.
The aircraft was heading to Makassar, capital of South Sulawesi, after departing from Yogyakarta province before contact was lost.
On the morning of Jan 18, 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 been deployed to the locations where the wreckage was discovered, Mr Sultan added, with search hampered by thick fog and mountainous terrain.
In video footage shared by the rescue agency, a window of the plane was found scattered on the mountain with thick fog and strong wind around it.
Mr Sultan said Indonesia’s National Transportation Safety Committee would lead an investigation into the crash. The cause remains unclear and 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.
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. REUTERS
