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.