Indonesian Airline Confirms Wreckage is Missing Papua Plane

JAKARTA LIFE'S STYLE. An airline official has confirmed that a wreckage found on Tuesday morning near Papua’s Bintang Mountains is likely that of a Twin Otter plane that disappeared on Sunday with 21 people onboard.

Search and rescue teams reported this morning that they had located a plane tail in forest 37 kilometers south of Oksibil, the town where the Merpati Nusantara Airlines plane was due to land on Sunday afternoon. Rescuers are trying to land in the area by helicopter but there is little hope any passengers or crew will be found alive.

“The tail of the plane was spotted at 6:00 a.m. local time,” Merpati chief director Bambang Bhakti said.

An airborne search team saw the wreckage near Ampisibil village in Bintang Mountains, at a height of 2,850 meters.

The plane left Jayapura at 1:10 p.m., but lost contact with air traffic controllers at 1:35 p.m.. The flight to Oksibil was supposed to take 50 minutes.

It has been speculated that the pilot may have lost visibility due to bad weather, but the chairman of the Indonesian Pilots Federation, Cpt. Monatar Napitupulu, said that there are a special set of standard procedures for pilots who fly in Papua.

“No matter how close you are to the destination, if your visibility is decreasing you have to return to base,” Napitupulu told TVOne.

The special rules are based on Papua’s unpredictable weather and landscape, which has led to a number of plane crashes in the region. Much of Papua is covered with impenetrable jungles and mountains and, in the past, some crashed planes there have never been found.

On Monday, the Transportation Ministry said it was looking at a plan to change flight routes and to install a satellite system for all airlines operating in the province.