Indonesia searching for missing plane with 11 onboard

Indonesian rescue teams are searching for an ATR 42-500 fisheries surveillance plane that went missing with 11 people on board, officials said.

The Indonesian Air Transport plane lost contact with air traffic control in the Maros area in South Sulawesi province at around 13:30 local time on Saturday, Andi Sultan, an official with the local rescue agency, told Reuters.

Sultan said the plane departed from Yogyakarta province and headed towards Makassar, the capital of South Sulawesi, before contact was lost.

He added that there were eight crew members and three passengers on board.

Sultan said that approximately 400 personnel, including military and police units, were assigned to search for the plane and its occupants, but the efforts were hampered by bad weather conditions. He declined to comment on the possible cause of the incident.

“We suspect that the plane crashed near the peak of Bulusaraung Mountain. We deployed our personnel there,” he said.

Ministry official Pung Nugroho Saksono told the state news agency Antara that the plane was rented by the Indonesian Ministry of Marine Affairs and Fisheries.

Maritime Affairs and Fisheries ‍Minister Sakti Wahyu Trenggono said the three passengers were ministry personnel conducting aerial surveillance related to fisheries.

The ATR 42-500 is a regional turboprop aircraft capable of carrying 42 to 50 passengers.

According to unverified Flightradar24 data, an aircraft matching the description was flying eastbound at approximately 3,350 meters over the Java Sea before rapidly losing altitude and abandoning its tracking systems.

In France, French-Italian aircraft manufacturer ATR said it had been informed of a crash in Indonesia and that its experts were supporting local authorities as they began their investigation.