Indonesian search teams have recovered the bodies of the 54 people on board a plane that crashed in the mountains of eastern Papua province.
Advertisement
“Hopefully the recovery process will go safely and smoothly today”, Bambang said as quoted by Antara.
The transportation of the bodies has been hampered by unfavorable weather conditions, according to rescuers.
Another 11 bodies are being carried through the dense forests and mountainous terrain from where the Trigana Air plane crashed on Sunday in bad weather after taking off from Jayapura.
Along with the passengers on Flight TGN267, which was flying from Jayapura, the capital of Papua province, to Oksibil, there was nearly half one million dollars in money on board, and people funds have been going to be distributed to poor households in distant areas of the nation. Some of the money was charred, he said, and the majority remained missing.
But transport ministry spokesman J. A. Barata said Wednesday the flight data recorder, which takes readings from many different parts of the aircraft, had not yet been recovered.
The tragedy was merely the latest air accident in Indonesia, which has a poor aviation safety record and has suffered major disasters in recent months, including the crash of an AirAsia plane in December resulting in the loss of 162 lives.
A team of three investigators from France’s BEA agency, which probes air accidents, and four technical advisors from ATR, a European plane maker based in France, have arrived in the Indonesian capital Jakarta to help with the investigation.
The Basarnas crew is also searching for the ATR-42 twin turboprop plane’s data recorders to determine why the plane crashed during a flight from Jayapura to Oksibil, the Pegunungan Bintang district seat.
Advertisement
It lost contact with air traffic control 10 minutes before landing as it tried to descend in thick clouds and rain. But on Wednesday he said officials had misinterpreted reports from rescuers at the scene.
