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Posted on 01/01/2007 7:37:02 PM PST by mfnorman
JAKARTA, Indonesia - Rescuers found the smoldering wreckage Tuesday of an Indonesian jetliner that went missing during a storm. Officials said 90 people were killed but 12 survived in the country's second disaster in days. Monday's crash followed on the heels of the sinking of a passenger ferry late Friday in Indonesia's Java Sea that left 400 people dead or missing.
The Boeing 737 operated by local carrier Adam Air crashed in a mountainous region of Sulawesi island in the northeast of the sprawling archipelagic nation, said local police Chief Col. Genot Hariyanto.
"The plane is destroyed and many bodies are around there," he said.
Adam Air spokesman Hartonom, who goes by just one name, said 90 people were killed and that there were 12 survivors.
(Excerpt) Read more at news.yahoo.com ...
You wonder how those twelve people managed to survive, and in what state. I cannot imagine surviving a crash like that. What a trauma. Poor souls!--may God strengthen them as they try to recover.
so true ... i pray that God's healing power will be them and their families and that His comfort will descend upon the families of the victims.
The plane was on a domestic flight from Java island to Sulawesi when it disappeared late Monday about an hour before it was due to land amid very bad weather. The captain managed to send out two distress signals, said national aviation chief Ichsan Tatang said late Monday.
(CNN)
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Maybe lightening strike...
Didn't this flight send a distress call at 30,000 ft?
Wow- first I've heard of this- simply amazing that any survived- been kinda keeping an ear on the news, but didn't hear about this till just now- thanks for posting http://sacredscoop.com
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100 DIE AS BOEING JET RUNS OUT OF FUEL AT 35,000FT
Jan 2 2007Plane 'drops out sky'
By Don Mackay
MORE than 100 people were killed yesterday as a plane fell out of the sky - feared to have run out of fuel at 35,000 feet.
The last thing heard from an Adam Air Boeing 737-400 was a distress signal over an Indonesian jungle.
An air traffic controller told how the jet, with six crew and 96 passengers - 11 of them children - vanished from his screen.
The controller, identified only as Bhabr, said the plane hit "very bad" New Year storms and "may have run out of fuel" in mid-flight.
Turbulence was being investigated as a cause of the crash as pilots used full throttle to try to escape the storms.
Indonesian transport minister Hatta Radjasa said an SOS call from the pilots was heard - then nothing.
The plane had left Surabaya on the country's main island of Java at 1pm local time - 6am GMT - on a two-hour flight to Manado, on the northern tip of Sulawesi island.
But two hours later, the no - frills flight KI-574 vanished from the sky.
Eddy Suyanto, military airport chief in south Sulawesi, said the final transmissions indicated "a big chance it had an accident or a crash".
A rescue plane and five helicopters set out to two possible crash sites earlier today.
National aviation chief Ichsan Tatang said the 17-year-old plane was in good condition but that it was flying in "very bad weather".
Last year, an Adam Air jet lost communication and navigation systems for four hours on another domestic flight.
The pilot was forced to make an emergency landing.
12 survive plane crash in Indonesian mountains
(Reuters)
2 January 2007
JAKARTA - Indonesia’s air force spotted the wreckage of a missing passenger plane with 102 people on board on Tuesday in a mountainous region of Sulawesi, the second transport disaster this week in the sprawling archipelago.
“The plane’s location has been found and 12 people from the 102 people on board have survived,” said airline spokesman Hartono, who goes by one name. “We are going to evacuate them to Makassar,” he said, referring to South Sulawesi’s provincial capital.
Ninety people were killed in the Adam Air crash, the second transport disaster this week in the sprawling archipelago. A copy of the plane’s manifest showed three passengers as non-Indonesians, but did not indicate their nationalities.
”They say the victims would be moved to Makassar but I could not find out anything about my relatives,” said Lely Jasman, 41, who was among a crowd of anxious relatives awaiting information from the Adam Air office at Makassar airport.
“Hopefully, they are among the 12 people I heard had survived,” said the civil servant from Makassar, whose uncle and cousin were on the plane.
No airline official was available for comment in Makassar.
First Air Marshal Eddy Suyanto, commander of Hasanuddin air base in Makassar, told Radio Elshinta an air force plane had spotted the wreckage of the Boeing 737-400.
“The plane was found around 20 kilometres from Polewali (town) in the mountains. The weather is clear,” Suyanto said.
The crash site is a five-hour drive through rough terrain from Polewali. Officials said local villagers have reached the area and rescue teams were on the way.
Blackbox search
Setyo Rahardjo, head of Indonesia’s national transport safety committee, told Reuters experts also have been sent to find the plane’s blackbox.
“I have formed a team that are on their way. We want to find the causes. We cannot give any conclusion yet at the moment.”
The disappearance of the plane came two days after the sinking of an Indonesian ferry, around 400 of whose passengers were still unaccounted for on Monday.
The plane lost contact with the ground on Monday about an hour before it was due to land in Manado in North Sulawesi, the transport ministry said.
At Jakarta’s main commercial airport, where the flight began its journey, taxi driver Oswald Mamalani told Reuters after the plane was initially reported missing that his younger sister and her child were aboard the plane.
“When I arrived home, I got a phone call from a relative in Manado asking me to pray ... for the safety of my sister,” he said.
The flight had taken off from a stopover in Surabaya on Java island and was scheduled to land about two hours later in Manado.
The transport ministry said the plane was airworthy and last serviced in December 2005. It had 45,371 flying hours and, according to Adam Air, the 17-year-old aircraft’s engines are CFM56-3C1 models made by General Electric, said Ikhsan Tatang, head of the ministry’s aviation directorate.
An Adam Air Boeing 737-300 plane was forced to make an emergency landing in February after a navigational failure caused the pilot to lose contact with its destination airport.
One of about a dozen budget airlines in the world’s fourth most populous nation, Adam Air operates 19 Boeing 737s. Established in 2002, it serves dozens of domestic routes and also flies to Singapore. In January a newspaper report said Adam Air was planning a share listing in Singapore for 2008.
The airline was established in 2002 by Agung Laksono, the speaker of Indonesia’s house of representatives and chairman of the company, and Sandra Ang. It began operations on Dec. 19, 2003.
Air travel in Indonesia, home to 220 million people, has grown substantially since the liberalisation of the airline industry after the Asian financial crisis in the late 1990s, which enabled privately owned budget airlines to operate.
That sure is a dirty plane. Any chance it used to fly for Air France?
ROFLMAO!
Missing Indonesian plane not found: official
WTH??
Now I'm really beginning to wonder about terrorism.
If the initial report of the finding was false, how could it have a detail like "12 survivors".
It maybe, but there's not much benefit putting a bomb in a plane with only Indonesians in it.
Remember BOJINKA? Seems to me there'd've been some Muslims on those planes. And it's not like Islamists have a problem slaughtering their fellow Muslims.
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