Family members of a passenger on board a crashed Trigana Air flight provide information to a police identification team at Sentani Airport near Jayapura, Papua province, Indonesia. (Reuters)
Bad weather hampered efforts today to reach debris in remote eastern Indonesian mountains believed to be from a plane that crashed carrying 54 people and cash worth almost half a million dollars.
More than 250 rescuers had tried to battle through dense forest to reach what is thought to be the wreckage of the Trigana Air plane, which disappeared yesterday during a short flight in Papua province.
The ATR 42-300 twin-turboprop plane was carrying 49 passengers and five crew on the journey from Papua's capital Jayapura to Oksibil, a remote settlement in the mountains to the south.
Also on the plane was 6.5 billion rupiah (470,000 dollars) in cash, which were social assistance funds being transported for distribution to poor families, according to the head of the Jayapura post office. The cash was being carried by four post office officials in bags.
The plane disappeared about 10 minutes before reaching its destination, soon after the crew requested permission to start descending in heavy cloud to land.
It is just the latest air accident in Indonesia, which has a poor aviation safety record and has suffered major disasters in recent months, including the crash of an AirAsia plane in December with the loss of 162 lives.
A plane today spotted debris engulfed in smoke in the mountains near Oksibil and search teams, including soldiers and police, set off in the early hours to reach the site, which is at an altitude of 8,300 feet (2,500 metres).
But thick fog, which reduced visibility to one metre (three feet), and rain hindered the bid to reach the crash site, the head of Indonesia's search and rescue agency Bambang Soelistyo told AFP.
Efforts to reach the location, about 15 kilometres (nine miles) from Oksibil, were called off for the day at 5:30 pm (0830 GMT) and would resume tomorrow, he added.