[Peetwo]

Trigana Air ATR42 accident - Indonesian West Papua
Recent updated report on this from the AFP  via the Oz:

[/url]54 feared dead as plane missing in Papua  

• by: Peter Alford, Gita Athika
  
• From: [url=http://www.theaustralian.com.au/]The Australian
  
• August 17, 2015 12:57AM
  

Correspondent
Jakarta



Trigana Air Services, a small airline established in 1991, operates services to about 40 destinations in Indonesia. Source: Supplied

Villagers in eastern Indonesia’s Papua province say a plane that went missing in the province with 54 people aboard has been found crashed.
 

“The plane has been found (by villagers). According to residents, the flight had crashed into a mountain. Verification is still in process,” said the transport ministry’s director-general of air transportation, Suprasetyo, who goes by one name.

The Trigana Air ATR 42 turboprop plane lost contact with air traffic control just before 1600 AEST yesterday after taking off from Sentani airport in Papua’s capital Jayapura on a flight to Oksibil, the search and rescue agency said.

The plane was carrying 44 adults, five children and five crew on the flight which was scheduled to take about 45 minutes, the agency said.

Ten minutes before it was due to land, the plane contacted Oksibil control tower asking to descend, Captain Beni Sumaryanto, Trigana Air’s service director of operations said.

But the plane never arrived

The aircraft was flown by Trigana, a Jakarta-based regional airline that flies short-hop routes around the archipelago.

Indonesia’s Metro TV reported last night that local people said they had seen a plane flying low and close to mountains at about the time contact was lost.
Weather conditions at Oksibil were overcast and misty.

Although its air-safety record has improved considerably in the past 15 years, Indonesia is still rated as one of the more hazardous countries for civil aviation in east Asia.

Trigana Air’s service director of operations, Beni Sumaryanto, said half an hour after the plane was reported missing, the airline had sent another turboprop plane over the same route to look for the missing aircraft.

“But the weather was very bad; it could not find it and the plane was turned back to Sentani,” Captain Sumaryanto told AFP.

“Oksibil is a mountainous area where the weather is very ­unpredictable.

“It can suddenly turn foggy, dark and windy without warning.

“We strongly suspect it’s a weather issue. It is not over­capacity, as the plane could take 50 passengers.”

Transport ministry spokesman J.A. Barata confirmed the plane had lost contact.
“We are not sure what happened to the plane yet and we are co-ordinating with local authorities,” he said. “The weather is currently very bad there, it’s very dark and cloudy. It’s not conducive for a search. The area is mountainous.”

Trigana Air is a small airline established in 1991 that operates domestic services to about 40 ­destinations in Indonesia.

Small aircraft are commonly used for transport in remote, mountainous Papua, and bad weather has caused several accidents in recent years.

On Wednesday, a Cessna propeller plane operated by Indonesian company Komala Air crashed in Papua’s Yahukimo district, killing one and seriously injuring five others on board.

And air transport investigators are finalising a report into one of the country’s worst air accidents, the crash of an air force Hercules C130 transport shortly after takeoff from the military airfield at Medan, North Sumatra, on June 30.

The aged Hercules was carrying at least 29 fare-paying civilian passengers, although that is forbidden by military regulations.

Additional reporting: AFP

Also Ben Sandilands puts into perspective some of the ludicrous, ill-informed MSM reporting on this tragic accident:
 

Absurd questions asked after West Papua turbo-prop crash

Ben Sandilands | Aug 17, 2015 7:32AM |

No-one in Australia is likely to have any insights at this stage into the tragic crash of an Indonesian turbo-prop in a mountainous area of West Papua yesterday, but that hasn’t stopped three radio stations demanding answers, and more.

Two of the proposed questions which came with proposed answers were particularly silly.

One was whether or not the Trigana crash, of an ATR 42-300 about 27 years old, reflected on turbo-prop safety in this country.

It doesn’t. Australia has Australian problems or issues with the safety of regional turbo-prop operations in isolated instances. There is nothing to extrapolate from the Indonesian crash.

The age of the aircraft is immaterial. Its maintenance isn’t. If the aircraft has been properly maintained many parts of the original aircraft will have been compulsorily replaced with new parts.  That’s how aged aircraft maintenance works.  You keep them young, or less aged, by timely replacement of parts.

The aircraft is also on the EU list of banned carriers.

Well, whoopee. Air France isn’t on that list, and it is on the reported accidents and investigations, a far more dangerous or frightening airline than any that immediately spring to mind in Indonesia.

The European banned list includes carriers like Trigana that couldn’t fly to Europe with the types of aircraft they have without landing multiple times to refuel.  The European list in relation to small (and indeed scary) Asian airlines is about as logical as banning Bankok tuk-tuks from competing with French taxis in Paris (which are also indeed scary at times.)

The European list is a grubby little xenophobic exercise in leveraging anti-Asian sentiment. And incredibly selective in that it ignores home dangers and risks.

Like a great deal of media today, there is no investment in radio in serious expert reporting. The job of those of us who want to take air transport seriously isn’t to provide free content to radio programs that turn up in our ear demanding instant analysis and answers that conform to ignorant preconceptions.

MTF...P2