All 54 people aboard an Indonesian Trigana Air Service ATR42 are presumed dead after the aircraft crashed into a mountainside in the province of Papua on Sunday. The aircraft took off from Jaypura on a 42-minute flight to Oksibil and crashed 33 minutes into the flight.”Residents provided information that the aircraft crashed into Tangok mountain,” Air Transportation Director General Suprasetyo said. High winds, rain and some fog were reported in the area. There was no radio report of trouble from the crew, according to government officials. The last call from the aircraft was a descent request, according to the Sydney Morning Herald.
“We strongly suspect it’s a weather issue. It is not overcapacity, as the plane could take 50 passengers,” Trigana Director of Operations Beny Sumaryanto told reporters. There were 49 passengers, including five children, and five crew aboard the aircraft. All were believed to be Indonesian. Bad weather hampered an air search but the crash site was reached by local villagers who witnessed the accident.It was the third major crash in Indonesia in less than a year and the airline involved has been on a European Union blacklist of air carriers since 2007. Trigana has 10 ATRs and four old Boeing 737 classics and has had 14 major incidents that wrote off 10 airframes in the last 25 years, according to the Aviation Safety Network’s database.
