Indonesian search and rescue agency Basarnas confirmed Tuesday that none of the 54 people aboard the Trigana Air Service ATR 42-300 that crashed in Papua province survived. Search teams made their way to the crash site in a densely forested and mountainous area of Papua on Tuesday to discover the mangled wreckage of the aircraft and the bodies of its passengers and crew. A Basarnas official also reported that searchers found the flight data and voice recorders “in good condition.”
Indonesian search airplanes spotted debris from the wreckage from the air on Monday, but officials had to suspend the ground search and helicopter operations until the following day due to weather conditions.
The twin turboprop regional airliner crashed at Bintang, some 10 minutes from its destination Oksibil. The 27-year-old aircraft took off at 2:22 p.m. local time for a roughly half-hour flight from the provincial capital Jayapura on the northern coast of Papua, just west of the Papua New Guinea boarder. Its 54 occupants included two children and three infants as well as five crewmembers.
The route took the airplane over a remote, heavily forested and mountainous part of the island. Indonesian officials indicated that the crew issued no distress call by the time ATC lost contact roughly 10 minutes before the airplane was due to land in Oksibil.