The ATR 42-300 operated by Trigana Air had disappeared from the radar on Sunday just 10 minutes before its scheduled arrival at Oksibil in the mountainous Pegunungan Bintang district.
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“Early this morning, a plane swept the route and sighted debris in an area near Oksibil, but we want to double check now”, transport ministry spokesman JA Barata said.
Officials have confirmed wreckage was spotted 7 miles from the airport city, with search and rescue teams now attempting to access the crash site by air and foot.
Details are still filtering through, but the official says villagers reported seeing the plane smash into the side of a mountain.
The head of Jayapura’s post office, Haryono, who like many Indonesians goes by only his first name, told the BBC that the plane had been carrying four bags of cash.
There was no immediate word if there were any survivors from yesterday’s crash, which happened in bad weather.
“Residents provided information that the aircraft crashed into Tangok mountain”. The poor weather conditions and rugged terrain delayed attempts by rescuers to reach the crashed plane, reports USA Today.
He said poor infrastructure in Indonesia’s easternmost province meant that assistance money was often flown in by air.
After the carrier went missing, Trigana Air sent another plane to look for it but they were not able to see any wreckage or signs as to where the missing plane could have gone to, due to the bad weather.
Kompas.com reported him as saying that search and rescue teams were also working to reach the site of the crash by land.
Eight of the incidents resulted in the loss of the aircraft, and the 11 others involved major damage, Flightglobal said.
The aircraft passenger manifest listed 44 adult passengers, five crew, two children and three babies, according to BASARNAS.
The airline’s crisis center official in Jayapura’s Sentani airport, Budiono, said all the passengers were Indonesians.
From 2007 to 2009, the European Union barred Indonesian airlines from flying to Europe because of safety concerns. According to Aviation Safety Network, these aircrafts have an average age of 26.6 years.
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In June, more than 100 people died when a military plane crashed into a residential neighborhood in Medan, Indonesia’s third-largest city. In December a year ago, An Indonesian Plane carrying 162 people crashed in the Java sea on its way to Singapore.
