A passenger plane with 54 people on board that crashed in the mountains of eastern Indonesia was carrying nearly half a million dollars in government cash for poor families to help offset a spike in fuel prices, a local postal official said today.
Smoldering wreckage of the Trigana Air Service turboprop plane was spotted from the air today morning in a rugged area of the easternmost province of Papua, rescue officials said.
There was no immediate word if there were any survivors from yesterday's crash, which happened in bad weather.
Four postal workers aboard the plane were escorting four bags of cash totaling USD 468,750 in government fuel aid money, Haryono, the head of the post office in Jayapura, the provincial capital, told The Associated Press.
The ATR42-300 twin turboprop plane was flying from Jayapura to the city of Oksibil when it lost contact.
Transportation Ministry spokesman Julius Barata said there was no indication that the pilot had made a distress call.
The cash from the Social Affairs Ministry was to be distributed among poor people in remote areas to cushion the jump in fuel costs, said Haryono, who like many Indonesians goes by one name.
"They were carrying those bags (of cash) to be handed out to poor people in Oksibil through a post office there," Haryono said.
President Joko "Jokowi" Widodo's administration raised fuel prices late last year and slashed government subsidies, a move the government says will save the country billions of dollars but has already sparked angry protests around the country.
Officials said the wreckage was spotted about 12 kilometers (7 miles) from Oksibil. Henry Bambang Soelistyo, the chief of the National Search and Rescue Agency, said search and rescue teams were preparing to try to reach the crash site by air and foot.
The plane was carrying 49 passengers and five crew members on a scheduled 42-minute flight. Five children, including two infants, were among the passengers.
"Smoke was still billowing from the wreckage when it was spotted by a plane search," said Soelistyo who is leading the rescue operation from Sentani Airport in Jayapura, adding that bad weather and rugged terrain were hampering efforts to reach the wreckage located in a mountainous area at an altitude of 2,600 meters (about 8,500 feet).
He said elite forces from the air force and army will build a helipad for evacuation purposes near the crash site.
Much of Papua is covered with impenetrable jungles and mountains. Some planes that have crashed in the past have never been found.
