Jakarta: The wreckage of an Indonesian passenger plane which was gone missing with 54 people on board has been spotted in the remote western Papua region.
The Trigana Air flight was lost contact a day before as it was flying from the provincial capital, Jayapura, to the town of Oksibil.
Indonesia’s transport minister said that the ill-fated aircraft had been found in the Bintang highlands region by the local natives.
The villagers were earlier pointed out that a plane would have crashed in the nearby mountain.
Then, a plane brought for search purposes was also spotted the suspected debris.
Indonesia’s postal office said that the plane was carrying four bags containing cash, about 6.5 billion rupiah ($486,000; £300,000).
The sum was meant for villagers living in the remote places in Papua.
The head of Jayapura’s post office, Haryono said that his colleagues used to carry those bags and directly handover the same to the poor people over there.
On board the ATR42-300 twin turboprop plane, there were 44 adult passengers, five children and infants in addition to five crew members.
It is not yet known whether anyone has been survived.
The plane which took off from Iayapura Sentani airport was lost contact with the air traffic controllers after half an hour.
Bintang Mountains Regency Police Chief Yunus Wally told Antara news agency that the debris was spotted near a waterfall by a search plane and on the basis of that information the ground teams were preparing to move to the area.
Chief of Indonesia’s national search and rescue agency, Henry Bambang Soelistyo, told AP news agency that smoke had been still billowing up from the debris spotted by the search plane.
According to him the bad weather and rugged terrain were troubling them a lot in their efforts to reach the location and carry out relief operations.
Video on Indonesian passenger plane wreckage
