The wreckage of a Russian passenger airliner that went missing during
a demonstration flight over Indonesia has been located in a mountainous
area, a local official said Thursday.
Teams searching for the
plane spotted debris from the Sukhoi Superjet 100 at a height of about
5,800 feet (1,800 meters) on the side of Mount Salak, a volcano south of
Jakarta, said Daryatmo, head of the National Search and Rescue Agency.
Daryatmo, who like many Indonesians only uses one name, said the Sukhoi logo had been identified amid the wreckage.
No information was
immediately available about the passengers who were on board the plane,
which disappeared off radar screens on Wednesday.
Rescue workers on the
ground have not yet been able to reach the wreckage, but the Search and
Rescue Agency is dispatching a helicopter to the site, Daryatmo said.
There were conflicting
reports about the number of people on the Sukhoi jet, Russia's newest
civilian airliner, when it went down, with different agencies giving
headcounts between 37 and 47.
The confusion appeared to stem from uncertainty about whether everybody on the passenger list actually boarded the plane.
The latest number of
people on board, provided by the Indonesian Transportation Safety
Committee, was 47, all of whom were Indonesian except eight Russian crew
members and two other foreign nationals.
The plane was on its
second demonstration flight Wednesday when it lost contact with air
controllers at Jakarta's Halim Perdanakusuma Airport.
"The first demonstration flight in the morning went smoothly," said Sunaryo. "There were no problems."
On the second flight, the plane began making its descent but vanished from radar screens at 6,200 feet in a mountainous area.
The plane lost contact
with air traffic controllers at 2:12 p.m., 21 minutes after taking off,
said Marsda Daryatmo, head of the search and rescue agency. Two
helicopters were immediately sent out to search for the plane but had to
return to their bases due to strong winds and unpredictable weather.
The Sukhoi jet arrived
in Jakarta as part of a demonstration tour of six Asian countries. It
had been to Myanmar, Pakistan and Kazakhstan, and was due to visit Laos
and Vietnam after Indonesia, said the Russian news agency RIA Novosti.
Sukhoi manufactures
military aircraft and is known especially for its fighter jets. Its
civilian aircraft is narrow-bodied with a dual-class cabin that can
transport 100 passengers over regional routes. It flew its maiden flight
in 2008.
In March, a Superjet 100
operated by Russia's Aeroflot Airlines was forced to abandon its flight
to Astrakhan, Russia, and return to Moscow because of problems with the
undercarriage, according to RIA Novosti.
A similar defect in another Aeroflot-operated Superjet 100 plane had to be fixed in Minsk in December.
Russia's state-run United Aircraft Corp. said the defect did not affect passenger safety.
Source: CNN News