Indonesian rescuers on Friday recovered the bodies of all 10 passengers aboard a fishery surveillance aircraft that went missing over the weekend in South Sulawesi province, according to the country’s search and rescue agency.
The bodies of all 10 passengers and crew members aboard a fishery surveillance aircraft that went missing over the weekend have been recovered in Indonesia’s South Sulawesi province, the country’s search and rescue agency confirmed on Friday.
The ATR 42-500 turboprop owned by aviation group Indonesia Air Transport (IAT) lost contact with air traffic control on Saturday at about 1:30 p.m. local time (0530 GMT) around the Maros region in South Sulawesi, according to Reuters.
There were seven crew members and three passengers on board the plane, which was chartered by Indonesia’s Marine Affairs and Fisheries Ministry to conduct air surveillance on its fisheries. The passengers were ministry staff members.
Andi Sultan, an official at South Sulawesi’s rescue agency, said through tears during a video statement that authorities found the ninth and tenth bodies early on Friday, adding that the evacuation process was still ongoing.
The agency also confirmed on its Instagram account that the bodies of all 10 victims had been recovered.
Rescuers had earlier located the wreckage of the aircraft scattered across several sites around Mount Bulusaraung in the Maros region, about 1,500 kilometres (930 miles) northeast of Jakarta.
Vibeslyfe previously reported that the aircraft was declared missing shortly after losing contact with air traffic control, prompting a large-scale search operation involving multiple rescue teams navigating rugged mountainous terrain and difficult weather conditions.
Indonesia’s National Transportation Safety Committee (KNKT) is now analysing the aircraft’s recovered black box as part of its investigation, the agency’s chief said this week.
The incident marks Indonesia’s first fatal crash involving an ATR 42 aircraft in more than a decade. The last occurred in 2015, when a Trigana Air Service ATR 42-300 crashed into a mountainside in Papua, killing all 54 people on board.