54 bodies recovered from Indonesian plane wreckage

JAKARTA, INDONESIA— Searchers on Tuesday found all 54 bodies in the wreckage of a plane that crashed on the weekend in Indonesia’s Papua province, officials said.

The ATR 42-300 aircraft operated by Trigana Air Service crashed on Sunday just 10 minutes before its scheduled arrival at Oksibil in the mountainous Pegunungan Bintang district. “If the weather allows, the bodies will be immediately evacuat- ed and handed over to their families once identified,” a Transport Ministry spokesman, Hadi Juraid ,said.

Another Transport Ministry official, Julius Barata, said the aircraft’s flight data and voice recorders, known as black boxes, were also found. The recorders will go to the National Transport Safety Committee for investigation, he said.

Search chief Bambang Sulistyo said the plane was destroyed and many bodies were burned beyond recognition. Earlier attempts by rescue workers to reach the location had been hampered by mountainous terrain and bad weather, officials said. The plane was on a 55-minute flight from the provincial capital Jayapura to Oksibil.

Four of the passengers were post office workers carrying 6.5 billion rupiah ($615,000 Canadian) in cash, said FX Haryono, the head of the Jayapura post office.

The money was to be distributed to families in Pegunungan Bintang under a government social welfare pro- gram. Bambang said bank notes were found at the crash site but many of them were burned.

The crash is the third major air accident in Indonesia in eight months, and is likely to raise more questions about the country’s aviation safety.

In December, AirAsia flight QZ8501 crashed into the Java Sea off Borneo, killing all 162 people on board.

In June, at least 141 people were killed after an Indonesian Air Force C-130 plane crashed into a residential area in Medan, North Sumatra.