Plane crash toll up to 30, black box not found

JAKARTA (JP): As search teams continued looking for the black box of the Sempati Air airplane which crashed Thursday, another passenger on the ill-fated flight died in Bandung yesterday.

Palal Santosa, a resident of Jakarta, died at Borromeus hospital yesterday at 8:00 a.m., increasing the death toll from the Fokker-27 crash to 30.

Palal's body was flown from Bandung to Jakarta where he will be buried.

The Jakarta-bound Sempati Air flight SG 304 crashed minutes after taking off from Husein Sastranegara in Bandung. The plane was carrying 45 passengers and five crew.

The cause of the crash has not been determined. The plane was leased by Sempati Air from Trigana Air Service.

Meanwhile search teams scoured the crash site at Cicukang village, just outside Bandung, for the fourth straight day yesterday for the aircraft's black box, which could contain vital information on the last moments of the flight before it crashed.

The orange-colored flight data recorder is usually located at the rear of the plane.

People continued to flock to the crash site yesterday, formerly a spinach field, to see the remains of the plane which had been sawn into smaller pieces and laid in a row.

Antara reported that a joint team from Sempati, the Air Force, police and boy scouts had taken away the propellers, engines and landing gear to the Bandung-based state owned IPTN manufacturing company factory for further examination.

Security appeared lax at the crash site as people were free to roam around the remains of the plane and were seen handling objects such as scraps of a school uniform belonging to one of the victims and a broken spectacle frame.

It was the fourth plane crash this year. The first was when a Merpati Nusantara Advanced Turbo Prop (ATP) aircraft crashed on Belitung island off Sumatra on April 19, killing 15 people and injuring 31.

Next, a CN-235 military version aircraft crashed during a flight test of a Low Altitude Parachute Extraction System at Gorda airbase in Serang, West Java on May 22. All six people on board were killed.

Another Merpati Nusantara, a Cassa 212, crashed earlier this month near Pattimura airport in Ambon, Maluku killing all three crew members. (mds)