Indonesia searches for missing plane with at least 10 on board

After losing contact with the plane, Indonesian authorities are searching for it, according to officials, which contained three government employees and at least seven members of the crew.

Before contact was lost, Andi Sultan, operations chief at the Makassar search and rescue agency, reported to Reuters, the fisheries surveillance aircraft had been departing from Yogyakarta Province and heading for Makassar, South Sulawesi’s capital.

He claimed that Air Traffic Control ceased communication with the ATR 42-500 aircraft, which was flown by Indonesia Air Transport, on Saturday around 12:30 p.m. (GMT) in the Maros region of South Sulawesi province.

He declined to comment on the potential cause of the incident.

Three employees from his ministry were aboard the plane, which was flown by Indonesia Air Transport, according to Maritime Affairs and Fisheries Minister Sakti Wahyu Trenggono, who spoke at a press conference on Saturday.

There were a variety of reports on the crew’s number. According to Sultan, there are eight passengers on board, whereas AFP, the airline, according to AFP, claims there are seven.

According to ministry official Pung Nugroho Saksono, the plane had been chartered by Indonesia’s Ministry of Marine Affairs and Fisheries.

Sultan claimed that the search and rescue organization had been unsure whether the plane had crashed near Mount Bulusaraung, and that 400 people were stationed to search for the plane and those aboard, despite the fact that bad weather had hampered the search and rescue effort.

An unconfirmed Flightradar24 aircraft flew eastward over the Java Sea at a height of about 11, 000 feet (approximately 3, 350 meters), before quickly losing altitude and dropping off tracking devices.

A regional turboprop aircraft with a capacity of 42 to 50 passengers is the ATR 42-500.

ATR, a Franco-Italian company, claimed it had been informed of “an accident” involving one of its aircraft and that its experts were “fully engaged” in supporting Indonesian investigators and the operator.