INDONESIAN authorities are searching for a plane carrying three government workers and at least eight crew members after contact with the aircraft was lost, officials said.
The fisheries surveillance aircraft had been heading to Makassar, the capital of South Sulawesi, after departing from Yogyakarta Province, before contact was lost, Andi Sultan, operations chief at the Makassar search and rescue agency, told the news agency Reuters.
He said that air traffic control lost contact with the ATR 42-500 aircraft, operated by Indonesia Air Transport, at about 1:30pm (0530 GMT) on Saturday, around the Maros region in South Sulawesi province.
He declined to comment on the possible cause of the incident.
Maritime affairs and fisheries minister Sakti Wahyu Trenggono told a news conference on Saturday that three employees from his ministry were on board the plane, which was operated by Indonesia Air Transport.
Reports on the number of crew members varied. Sultan said there were eight on board, while news agency AFP cited the airline as saying there were seven.
The plane had been chartered by Indonesia’s Ministry of Marine Affairs and Fisheries, ministry official Pung Nugroho Saksono told state news agency Antara.
Sultan said the search and rescue agency suspected that the plane had come down near the peak of Mount Bulusaraung, with about 400 personnel, including military and police units, deployed to search for the plane and those on board, though the effort was being hampered by bad weather.
According to unconfirmed Flightradar24 data, an aircraft matching the description was flying eastward over the Java Sea at about 11,000 feet (approximately 3,350 metres) before rapidly losing altitude and dropping off tracking systems.
The ATR 42-500 is a regional turboprop aircraft capable of carrying between 42 and 50 passengers.
Franco-Italian manufacturer ATR said it had been informed of “an accident” involving one of its planes and that its specialists were “fully engaged” to support both Indonesian investigators and the operator.
Indonesia, a vast archipelago in Southeast Asia, has a poor aviation safety record, with several fatal crashes in recent years.
