Indonesian aircraft with 54 passengers on board goes missing

An Indonesia plane with 54 passengers on board is missing after losing contact with air traffic control on Sunday in the remote, forested eastern Papua region, as search efforts have been hampered by failing light as night falls.

In a tweet posted on Sunday, the National Agency Search and Rescue Agency (BASARNAS) said the Trigana Air twin-turboprop aircraft had 54 passengers on board. The plane was reported to be an ATR-42 model.

“We can't confirm it has crashed. We can say contact has been lost with the plane,” BASARNAS chief Bambang Soelystyo told Reuters by phone.

“It's a Trigana airline plane carrying 54 people including 5 crew. We are working to get more details.”

The passengers include 44 adults, two children, three toddlers and five crew members. 

The plane was flying between Jayapura's Sentani Airport and Oksibil, due south of Jayapura, the capital of Papua province. According to the tweet, the aircraft lost contact while flying over the remote eastern Papua region at 2:55pm local time.

“We are not sure what happened to the plane yet and we are coordinating with local authorities,” transport ministry spokesman JA Barata told the AFP news agency.

“The weather is currently very bad there, it is very dark and cloudy. It is not conducive for a search. The area is mountainous.”

The search operation has been suspended as night fell in the region and will resume on Monday morning. The government said it is coordinating with other authorities to implement the search operation.

Small aircraft are commonly used for transport in remote, mountainous Papua, and bad weather has caused several accidents in recent years. Air transport is commonly used in Papua, Indonesia's easternmost province, where land travel is often impossible.

According to the Aviation Safety Network, an online database, the ATR 42-300 had its first flight 27 years ago. Trigana has been on the EU blacklist of banned carriers since 2007. Airlines on the list are barred from operating in European airspace due to either concerns about its safety standards, or concerns about the regulatory environment in its country of registration.

Trigana has had 14 serious incidents since it began operations in 1991, according to the Aviation Safety Network’s online database. Excluding this latest incident, it has written off 10 aircraft.

Indonesia's president promised a review of the aging air force fleet in July after a military transport plane crashed in the north of the country, killing more than 100 people.