Merpati plane crash kills 15 on Belitung Island
JAKARTA (JP): At least 15 people were killed and six others missing when a Merpati Nusantara airliner crashed on Belitung Island near South Sumatra yesterday morning.
Carrying 48 passengers and five crew members, the Advanced Turbo Prop (ATP) aircraft crashed into a palm oil plantation about six kilometers from Bulu Tumbang airport in Belitung's main city of Tanjung Pandan.
Rescue workers had yet to identify five of those who died because the bodies were badly charred.
Those already identified included pilot Bartholomeus Suwardi, 28 years old, his co-pilot Imamtuhu Susmono, 21, and stewardess Kramatiningsih, 20.
The other seven bodies already identified were Hendratama, Warsono, MK Zein, Zurasmah, Ipah, Sawil and Tjoa Tjong.
Witnesses said that most of the fatalities occurred from conflagration. The plane broke into three pieces upon impact.
Thirty two people survived in the accident, including stewardess Genduk Sri Rudati, 23, airborne mechanic Agus Supriyadi, 28, and three passengers identified as Abudin, Chotib and Sumantri.
Operation Director of Merpati Prasetyo Sumbodo handed over four of the 15 bodies -- those of Suwardi, Imamtuhu, Zein and Kramatiningsih, to their families here yesterday afternoon in heart-wrenching ceremony at Halim Perdanakusuma airport.
Genduk, Agus and two passengers had also been flown home yesterday.
Prasetyo said that a team had been established to investigate the cause of the crash. "We have collected data, but cannot yet conclude what caused the accident," Prasetyo said, adding that the team would meet on Monday.
The plane, flight number MZ-106, fell at about 8 a.m. West Indonesia Time, an hour and a half after it took off from Jakarta's Soekarno-Hatta Airport.
Tiny Tanjung Pandan lies some 458 kilometers northwest of South Sumatra's capital of Palembang.
Prasetyo ruled out engine troubles or poor weather as possible reasons for the accident. However, he said two of the five ATPs leased by Merpati are being grounded due to the absence of spare parts.
He said the investigative team had obtained the black box, the voice recorder of which would be sent for examination to a laboratory either in Australia or England. The cockpit flight recorder could be examined by the state-owned aircraft manufacturer IPTN in Bandung, West Java, according to Prasetyo.
Broken
Antara quoted Muhammad Budiman of the Belitung Public Hospital that six of the injured suffered from broken bones, but did not give details about the condition of the other victims.
Minister of Transportation Haryanto Dhanutirto flew to the crash site yesterday afternoon.
Director General of Air Transportation Zainuddin Sikado, who accompanied Haryanto to Belitung, said that the tower missed its contact with the pilot four minutes before the crash.
"We don't know what happened during those four minutes. A pilot usually gives signal if something wrong happens with his or her aircraft," he said.
Bartholomeus Suwardi worked with Merpati soon after graduating in 1990 from the government-owned pilot training center in Curug, near Jakarta. He was named an ATP flight instructor in September last year. He is survived by a wife and a two-year-old boy.
The youngest of the crew, Kramatiningsih, had joined Merpati for only 39 days. Born on Oct. 12, 1976, in Balikpapan, East Kalimantan, Kramatiningsih joined the airline after she graduated from a stewardess training college earlier this year.
Merpati, which mostly serves domestic routes, is a subsidiary of the national flag carrier Garuda Indonesia.
Merpati started to operate five British Aerospace-made ATP aircraft since 1992, all plying short-distance routes. The 68- seat aircraft can fly at a maximum speed of 250 knots at an altitude of 22,000 feet.
The domestic airliner flies to Belitung from Jakarta twice a day.
Yesterday's accident was the first to involve Merpati since a DHC-8 Twin Otter aircraft went down in the Molo Strait, East Nusa Tenggara early in January 1995, killing all 10 people onboard.
A total of 33 people died in airplane-related accidents last year. The last plane crash occurred in early December last year, when a Cassa-100 light aircraft owned by Dirgantara Air Service crashed into a gas factory three kilometers east of the South Kalimantan capital of Banjarmasin and killed 17 people onboard. (amd/icn)