The Trigana Air Service plane that went missing on Sunday has been found, Indonesia’s director general of air transportation, Suprasetyo, said during a news conference.
The wreckage was found in the Oktabe district of Papua province, he said. Details are still being verified, Suprasetyo said, but villagers reported seeing the plane, which was carrying 54 passengers and crew, crash into a mountain.
Search and rescue teams that suspended their efforts on Sunday will conduct aerial and ground searches on Monday to confirm the villagers’ reports, he said.
The domestic flight lost contact with air traffic control in Papua province on Sunday afternoon, the nation’s search and rescue agency said on Twitter.
The flight left Sentani Airport in Jayapura at 2:22 p.m. and was scheduled to land in Oksibil at about 3:16 p.m., officials said.
The plane lost contact at about 2:55 p.m., Transportation Ministry spokesman, J.A. Barata, told CNN Indonesia.
Barata said there was no indication that a distress call was made from the plane. Officials received reports on Sunday afternoon that villagers had seen the plane go down, he said.
The plane was carrying 44 adult passengers, five children and five crew members. The search, which involved forested and mountainous terrain, was called off because weather and lack of light made an already dangerous landscape more problematic.
“A search was launched earlier today, but was called off because of bad weather, and it’s also now dark there,” Barata said.
Barata said he would be flying from Jakarta to Papua along with investigators and search and rescue officials.
