Indonesian authorities find wreckage of missing surveillance plane with 11 on board

JAKARTA: Indonesian authorities said on Sunday they had located the wreckage of a fisheries surveillance plane that went missing in South Sulawesi province near a fog-covered mountain, but were still searching for the 11 people on board.

The ATR 42-500 turboprop owned by aviation group Indonesia Air Transport lost contact with air traffic control on Saturday at about 1:30 p.m. local time (0530 GMT) around the Maros region in South Sulawesi.

There were eight crew members and three passengers on board the plane, which was chartered by Indonesia’s Marine Affairs and Fisheries Ministry to conduct air surveillance on fisheries.

The passengers were ministry staff members.

The head of South Sulawesi’s rescue agency, Muhammad Arif Anwar, said on local television that after finding the wreckage, the rescuers would deploy 1,200 personnel to search for the missing passengers and crew.

“Our priority is to search for the victims, and we hope that there are some that we can evacuate safely,” he said.

Indonesia searching for missing surveillance plane with 11 onboard

The aircraft had been heading to Makassar, the capital of South Sulawesi, after departing from Yogyakarta province before contact was lost.

On Sunday morning, local rescuers found the wreckage in different locations around Mount Bulusaraung in the Maros region, said Andi Sultan, an official at South Sulawesi’s rescue agency.

The mountain is roughly 1,500 km (930 miles) northeast of the sprawling island nation’s capital, Jakarta.

“Our helicopter crews have seen the debris of the plane’s window at 7:46 a.m.,” Sultan told reporters.

“And around 7:49 a.m., we discovered large parts of the aircraft, suspected to be the fuselage of the plane,” he said, adding the tail of the plane was also seen at the bottom of the mountain slope. Rescuers have been deployed to the locations where the wreckage was discovered, Sultan said, adding the search was hampered by thick fog and mountainous terrain.

In video footage shared by the rescue agency, a window of the plane was found scattered on the mountain with thick fog and strong wind around it. Sultan said Indonesia’s National Transportation Safety Committee would lead an investigation into the crash.

The cause remains unclear, and experts say most accidents are caused by a combination of factors.

The ATR 42-500, manufactured by Franco-Italian planemaker ATR, is a regional turboprop aircraft capable of carrying between 42 and 50 passengers.

Flight tracking website Flightradar24 said on X that the plane was flying over the ocean at a low altitude so its tracking coverage was limited, and the last signal was received at 0420 GMT about 20 km northeast of Makassar airport.