It was not clear whether there were any survivors of the crash, which occurred during hard weather conditions in the mountainous region.
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A Super Puma helicopter crashed in the same area past year, said Sito, a BASARNAS communications operator in Jayapura who goes by one name.
However, a ground team was unable to reach it, according to Raymond Konstantin, an official of Indonesia’s search and rescue agency. It departed from Sentani Airport in Jayapura at 2:22 p.m. and was scheduled to arrive at Oksibil at 3:16 p.m.
A search plane spotted the wreckage with smoke still billowing from the crashed plane, rescue officials said on Monday, about seven miles from its destination of Oksibil.
The ATR 42-300 twin-turboprop plane was carrying 44 adult passengers, five children and five crew on the flight which was scheduled to take about 45 minutes.
Widodo cited a report from the Indonesian Ministry of Transport for the information, adding that army and police rescue and evacuation teams were trying to gain access to the remote, jungled crash site.
Transportation in the mountainous area of the Papua province is mainly served by propeller planes capable of taking off and landing on airstrips with less than one km runway that commonly serve several cities located on the hillside in the province. Some planes that have crashed there in the past have never been found. Officials have said that all of those on board were Indonesian.
Last December, 162 people aboard an AirAsia jet traveling to Singapore were killed when the plane plummeted into the Java Sea.
As Indonesia’s Transport Minister said, “local people in the Bintang highlands region found the aircraft”.
In June an Indonesian military plane crashed into a residential neighbourhood in the city of Medan, exploding in a fireball and killing 142 people.
Trigana Air has had 14 serious incidents since it began operations in 1991, losing 10 aircraft in the process. Airlines on the list are barred from operating in European airspace due to either concerns about safety standards or the regulatory environment in their country of registration.
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But accidents in recent years have raised urgent questions about the safety of Indonesia’s booming airline sector, with experts saying poor maintenance, rule-bending, and a shortage of trained professionals are partly to blame.
