Fisheries minister says three staff from ministry on board airplane, operated by Indonesia Air Transport.
Revealed On 17 Jan 2026
Indonesian authorities are trying to find a airplane carrying three authorities employees and at the least seven crew members after contact with the plane was misplaced, officers stated.
The fisheries surveillance plane had been heading to Makassar, the capital of South Sulawesi, after departing from Yogyakarta Province, earlier than contact was misplaced, Andi Sultan, operations chief on the Makassar search and rescue company, instructed the information company Reuters.
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He stated that air visitors management misplaced contact with the ATR 42-500 plane, operated by Indonesia Air Transport, at about 1:30pm (0530 GMT) on Saturday, across the Maros area in South Sulawesi province.
He declined to touch upon the attainable reason for the incident.
Maritime affairs and fisheries minister Sakti Wahyu Trenggono instructed a information convention on Saturday that three staff from his ministry have been on board the airplane, which was operated by Indonesia Air Transport.
Stories on the variety of crew members diversified. Sultan stated there have been eight on board, whereas information company AFP cited the airline as saying there have been seven.
The airplane had been chartered by Indonesia’s Ministry of Marine Affairs and Fisheries, ministry official Pung Nugroho Saksono instructed state information company Antara.
Sultan stated the search and rescue company suspected that the airplane had come down close to the height of Mount Bulusaraung, with about 400 personnel, together with army and police items, deployed to seek for the airplane and people on board, although the trouble was being hampered by unhealthy climate.
In response to unconfirmed Flightradar24 information, an plane matching the outline was flying eastward over the Java Sea at about 11,000 ft (roughly 3,350 metres) earlier than quickly dropping altitude and dropping off monitoring methods.
The ATR 42-500 is a regional turboprop plane able to carrying between 42 and 50 passengers.
Franco-Italian producer ATR stated it had been knowledgeable of “an accident” involving certainly one of its planes and that its specialists have been “totally engaged” to assist each Indonesian investigators and the operator.
Indonesia, an enormous archipelago in Southeast Asia, has a poor aviation security file, with a number of deadly crashes lately.
