East Kalimantan plane crash kills seven
The Jakarta Post, Jakarta
Seven people were killed, including a baby, and three others were injured in a plane crash in East Kalimantan on Thursday, an incident that followed a similar crash in July where nine people were injured and one survived.
An airport official in Tarakan confirmed that the small Dirgantara Air Service plane with 10 passengers and crew members onboard, crashed into a swampy area two minutes after takeoff from Tarakan airport in the province.
The official said the plane was on a scheduled 80-minute flight to the nearby town of Long Bawan, "but, just two minutes after taking off, the pilot radioed that he had to return to the airport."
The crash site was only 1.2 kilometers from the airport's runway and the plane, with its nose buried in the swamp, did not catch fire because of rainy conditions (photo above).
He said three people, including a five-year-old boy, survived the crash. They -- Suryanto, Yanto and Adi-- are still in a critical condition at the Tarakan General Hospital.
The seven that were killed instantly have been identified as, Eddy Yusuf, Desy, Apoliana, Indra, Sarjani, Kanapi and Rachmat. All the dead victims were taken to the hospital before being handed over to their relatives.
The Indonesian part of Borneo island is covered by vast tropical forests. There are few roads and air travel is common. Because of extremely poor maintenance, plane crashes occur frequently in the country.
In July, nine people were killed when a cargo version of the Britten-Norman BN-2B smashed into a mountainside while on a routine, one-hour flight in the same region.
One person survived the crash. Bruised and starving, the survivor told authorities that he had walked for five days from the crash site through the dense jungle before coming upon Papadi village.
The chairman of the local office of Search and Rescue Agency, Kusnaidi, said the eight-seat-Britten-Norman airplane which was also operated by Dirgantara Air Service crashed after both of its engines developed mechanical trouble. It went down after failing to make an emergency landing.