11 May 2012
Journalists feared dead in Indonesian air crash
Air accident
As many as seven journalists are feared dead after a Russian-made Sukhoi SuperJet crashed into a remote mountainside in Indonesia on Wednesday.
The aircraft was carrying 45 passengers, including journalists, businessmen and Russian embassy officials, on a promotional flight before it went missing about 40 miles south of Jakarta. Five journalists were identified by name but other reports suggest as many as seven journalists could have been aboard the aircraft.
Bloomberg News reported yesterday that one of its journalists, Femi Adi Soempeno, was one of the passengers on the plane. Dody Aviantara and Didik Nur Yusef, from Angkasa Magazine, and Ismiyati and Aditia Sukardi, from TransTV, are also aboard the demonstration flight and are believed to have been killed. Radio contact with the aircraft was lost at about 0800 GMT on Wednesday after it descended to 6,000 feet near Mount Salak, which rises to 7,254 feet above sea level, a rescue official said.
A search resumed at dawn on Thursday and a rescue helicopter later spotted debris on the side of the dormant Mount Salak volcano, sending multiple teams on a trek across steep and heavily forested terrain to reach the site. However poor weather conditions have been hampering retrieval operations. A picture taken from the helicopter appeared to show that the plane hit the top of an almost vertical wall of rock.
Small pieces of white debris could be seen scattered down an exposed stretch of cliff. "The airplane crashed at the edge of Salak mountain ... An investigation must be done immediately and thoroughly," President Susilo Bambang Yudhoyono told a news conference. No survivors had been found as of Thursday afternoon.
