Wreckage of the Adam Air Boeing 737-400 that went missing while on a domestic flight in Indonesia yesterday has reportedly been located.
Reports from Indonesia quote government officials as saying the wreckage was spotted by search aircraft in a mountainous area on the island of Sulawesi. There is no word on survivors.
The Adam Air 737-400 (the 18-year old PK-KKW) went missing yesterday while operating a domestic service between Surabaya and Manado. Contact was lost as the aircraft was around 1hr into the flight, which should have taken around 2h.
Adam Air says that the aircraft, which departed Surabaya at 12:55 west Indonesian time, lost contact with Ujung Pandang air traffic control and radar about an hour later at 14:53 central Indonesian time. The distance between Surabaya and Manado is around 900nm (1,670km).
On board were 96 passengers and six crewmembers, the airline says on its website. Local reports say weather conditions were poor at the time the aircraft went missing.
Meanwhile, investigators from the US National Transportation Safety Board (NTSB) are on their way to Indonesia to assist in the crash probe.
The NTSB says in a statement that senior investigator Robert Benzon has been designated as the US accredited representative.
“In addition to an NTSB structures investigator, representatives from the Federal Aviation Administration, Boeing Aircraft Company and General Electric Engines will join the team,”
adds the NTSB.
Based in Jakarta, privately-owned Adam Air has a fleet of around 20 737s. The missing aircraft, according to Flight's aircraft database ACAS, is owned by Triton Aviation Services.
In February this year an Adam Air 737-300 en route to the Sulawesi region was forced to perform an emergency landing on the remote Indonesian island of Sumba after navigation problems.
Source: FlightGlobal.com
