No sign of missing Adam Air plane in Indonesia

Andi Hajramurni, The Jakarta Post, Makassar

A massive land, air and sea search kicked off Wednesday for the missing Adam Air jet failed to find the aircraft by late evening as frustrated relatives of the missing victims continued to camp out at airports in Sulawesi and Java.

Three Navy ships set sail soon after sunrise in the Makassar Strait and five Air Force planes took to the skies, searching for signs of the Boeing 737-400 aircraft, Bambang Karnoyudho, the head of the National Search and Rescue Agency, told AP.

Commander of the Hasanuddin Air Force Base in Makassar, Commodore Eddy Suyatno, said the search, coordinated from the city, was made between the Sulawesi coastal town of Majene and the heavily forested area of Tanah Toraja.

However, “we found not a slightest hint (of an accident) in the location where Adam Air plane was last detected,” Eddy said.

Air Force squadron commander Lt. Col. Mudjianto, whose team followed the plane’s scheduled flight path to the site where its last distress signal was picked up, said visibility was good Wednesday as his team searched a roughly 300-square-mile triangle of sea and land.

“We flew over the area four times … but there was no sign of the plane,” Mudjianto said, as quoted by AP.

The plane lost contact with the ground on Monday about an hour before it was due to land in Manado.

Officials also said much energy of the search involving civilian teams apart from the police and military, had been wasted owing to false information on the aircraft’s whereabouts.

Transportation Minister Hatta Radjasa on Tuesday retracted statements the plane had been found in Polewali Mandar, West Sulawesi, with 12 survivors.

“I feel fooled. This is what I call playing games with the feelings of the victims’ relatives,” Peter Tolitton, whose brother was aboard the ill-fated plane, told Reuters.

“If up to the ministerial level the information is inaccurate, we doubt the credibility of the officials,” said Tolitton, a Jakarta resident, who was flown by Adam Air to Makassar, South Sulawesi.

Relatives continued to stream into the airport in Makassar, mainly from Manado and Surabaya, from where the plane had departed.

Selvi, a sister of Josbep Kawengian who was on board the plane with his wife, Novi Kawengian Duran, and their 18-month-old son, Delon, said not knowing whether her brother was dead or alive was nerve-wracking. “We want the search and rescue team to find the aircraft quickly so we can be certain of our family’s fate,” she said.

“Indonesia is a place full of miscommunication, contradictory information and confusion during an accident like this,” Nicholas Ionides, managing editor for Flight International Magazine in Asia, told AFP.

Along with 99 Indonesians on board were three American citizens, the U.S. Embassy in Jakarta confirmed.

They were earlier named as Scott Jackson and his daughters Stephanie and Lindsay.

The transport ministry said it had last evaluated the plane in December 2005, when it had passed all service checks. The aircraft was due to be checked again in late January.

However, Joseph Umar Hadi, an opposition member of the House of Representatives’s transport commission, said officials should take responsibility for the crash. Annual checks on planes operated by budget carriers were “very insufficient”, he said as quoted by Reuters.