JAKARTA, Indonesia — Indonesia sent a search team to a remote area where villagers said they found the wreckage of a Trigana Air flight with 54 people on board that lost contact with air- traffic controllers amid cloudy weather.
The wreckage of the ATR 42-300 turboprop plane was located in the Bintang highlands part of the Oksibil region, and there are no reports of any survivors, the British Broadcasting Corp. said. The debris was found by villagers who told officials it had crashed into a mountain, AFP reported.
Authorities earlier called off an aerial search as night fell in the region. Flight IL267 was on its way to Oksibil from Sentani in Jayapura when contact was lost, Transport Ministry spokesman J.A. Barata said. Sentani is located below the equator, about 3,300 miles to the east of Indonesia’s capital Jakarta.
The missing aircraft again brought aviation safety in Asia back into focus after a spate of crashes in the past two years.
