JAKARTA, Jan 18 — The Indonesian authorities have located the wreckage of a fisheries surveillance plane that went missing in South Sulawesi province near a fog-covered mountain, but are still searching for the 11 people on board.
The ATR 42-500 turboprop owned by aviation group Indonesia Air Transport lost contact with air traffic control yesterday at 1.30pm local time (0530 GMT) around the Maros region in South Sulawesi.
There were eight crew members and three passengers on board the plane, which was chartered by Indonesia's Marine Affairs and Fisheries Ministry for fisheries surveillance. The passengers were ministry personnel.
South Sulawesi's rescue agency head, Muhammad Arif Anwar, said that after finding the wreckage, rescuers would deploy 1,200 personnel to search for the missing passengers and crew.
"Our priority is to search for the victims, and we hope that there are some that we can evacuate safely," he said on local television.
The aircraft had been heading to Makassar, the capital of South Sulawesi, after departing from Yogyakarta province, before contact was lost.
Agency official Andi Sultan said local rescuers found the wreckage at various locations around Mount Bulusaraung in the Maros region this morning. The mountain is roughly 1,500 km (930 miles) northeast of the sprawling island nation's capital, Jakarta.
"Our helicopter crews have seen the debris of the plane's window at 7.46am. And around 7.49am, we discovered large parts of the aircraft, suspected to be the fuselage of the plane," he told the media, adding that the tail of the plane was also seen at the bottom of the mountain slope.
Rescuers have been deployed to the locations where the wreckage was discovered, but thick fog and mountainous terrain have hampered their search.
In video footage shared by the agency, a plane window was found scattered on the mountain amid thick fog and strong wind.
Sultan said that Indonesia's National Transportation Safety Committee would lead an investigation into the crash. The cause remains unclear, and experts say most accidents result from a combination of factors.
The ATR 42‑500, manufactured by Franco-Italian planemaker ATR, is a regional turboprop aircraft capable of carrying between 42 and 50 passengers.
On X (formerly Twitter), Flight tracking website Flightradar24 said that the plane was flying over the ocean at a low altitude, so its tracking coverage was limited, and the last signal was received at 0420 GMT about 20km northeast of Makassar airport.
