According to Trigana Air’s service director of operations, Beni Sumaryanto, the aircraft contacted the Oksibil control tower just ten minutes before its scheduled landing and asked to descend.
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Officials say an Indonesian plane carrying 54 people for what should have been only a 42-minute flight has disappeared over the country’s Papupa region.
“The plane has been found (by villagers)”.
According to Reuters, Indonesia’s president promised to review old planes after July’s crash – what’s he going to say now?
The plane was en route from Papua’s provincial capital, Jayapura, to the city of Oksibil in the central part of the island that also includes the independent state of Papua New Guinea. In total, 54 people – 44 adults and 5 children, in addition to 5 crew members – are on board.
‘The weather is now very bad there, it’s very dark and cloudy.
The hunt for the missing plane will resume in the morning, Indonesian search agency Basarnas said in a Twitter posting.
Transportation Ministry spokesman JA Barata “said there was no indication that a distress call was made from the plane”, CNN reports.
An Indonesia AirAsia plane crashed in the Java Sea last December while on an global flight from Surabaya to Singapore, killing all 192 people on board.
Officials said initially that villagers in the Okbape district of Papua reported seeing a plane crash.
According to the Aviation Safety Network, the airline has written off 10 aircraft, excluding this latest incident, since starting operations in 1991.
Trigana has been blacklisted by the European Union since 2007.
Air transport is commonly used in Papua, Indonesia’s easternmost province, where land travel is often impossible.
Dudi Sudibyo, an aviation analyst, said that Papua is a particularly unsafe place to fly because of its mountainous terrain and rapidly changing weather patterns.
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That tragedy spurred Indonesia to impose new regulations aimed at improving safety.
