Ten dead in Kalimantan plane crash
Ten dead in Kalimantan plane crash
Agencies, Jakarta
All 10 passengers and crew aboard a plane that crashed in
dense East Kalimantan jungle have been found dead, officials said
Thursday.
Rescue teams who reached the crash site reported that all
eight passengers and the two crewmen had died, said Zainuddin
Chairuddin, head of Tarakan airport from where the aircraft
departed on Tuesday morning.
"We received news that all 10 had died," said Zainuddin said.
"We are now airlifting the bodies out."
Zainuddin said he expected the process of bringing out the
bodies would continue until Friday.
The dead included one woman. All the passengers were ethnic
Dayaks who lived in the rugged interior of the province.
"The passengers on board...were local people like traders,
teachers and peasants and were carrying handbags and boxes," said
Yohanes Amoy of PT Borneo Air Transport, a joint operator of the
aircraft.
The pilot of the Britten Norman aircraft was a retired armed
forces officer, Zainuddin said.
The plane was headed for Yuvai Semaring airport at Long Bawan
in the west of the province, not far from the border with the
Malaysian states of Sabah and Sarawak.
It crashed atop a mountain 1,620 meters high, eight kilometers
from its intended destination.
About 150 troops, police and villagers had taken part in the
search for the missing aircraft.
On Wednesday, two American missionaries flying in a Cessna
spotted the aircraft -- a Britten-Norman BN-2B.
Airport officials had hoped that some passengers may still be
alive because the downed airplane was still emitting emergency
radio signals on Thursday.
The wreckage was found on the side of a mountain 16 kilometers
from the border of Malaysia's Sabah province, said Zainuddin.
The British-made plane, also known as the Islander, is a twin-
prop light transport with a fixed undercarriage. It is considered
highly reliable and has been exported widely to developing
nations, such as Indonesia.
Depending on the seating configuration, it can either carry
eight passengers or a one-ton payload.
The Borneo Air Transport plane's journey from Tarakan should
have taken 70 minutes but it disappeared about 15 minutes before
it was scheduled to land.
A separate team will investigate the cause of the crash,
Zainuddin said.