The fate of an Indonesian airliner missing with 102 people on board remained in doubt today after senior officials apologised for erroneously stating that its wreckage had been found.
It was earlier reported that 12 people survived when the aircraft crashed in heavy rain into the mountains of Indonesia's Sulawesi island.
Officials had said what was left of the plane, a Boeing 737-400 operated by budget carrier Adam Air, had been located in the mountains of Sulawesi island where it had crashed in heavy rain. Reports said 12 people had survived the crash.
The plane was carrying 96 passengers and six crew. A copy of its manifest showed three passengers as non-Indonesians. The United States embassy in Jakarta said they were Americans.
Relatives waiting for news broke down in tears after learning today that senior Indonesian officials erroneously reported the Boeing 737's charred wreckage had been found.
The plane carrying sent out two distress signals in stormy weather yesterday halfway through its two-hour journey from Indonesia's main island of Java to Manado, on the northern tip of Sulawesi, one of the largest islands in the sprawling archipelago.
It lost contact with the ground on Monday about an hour before it was due to land in Manado in North Sulawesi, the transport ministry said.
Rescue and search teams hiked through heavy rain and slippery forest paths for more than 10 hours Tuesday but found nothing, calling off their search along Sulawesi's mountainous western coast as darkness fell and vowing to set off again at dawn on Wednesday.
Bambang Karnoyudho, the head of the National Search and Rescue Agency, said the search would be expanded to include the nearby Makassar Strait.
The announcement capped a day of hope and anguish for relatives of those on Flight KI-574.
Police Chief Col. Genot Hariyanto earlier said rescue teams had arrived at the crash site. Setyo Raharjo, head of the National Commission on Transportation Safety, said 90 bodies were found near the wreckage, and the search for the other 12 was continuing.
The claims were repeated by everyone from the chief of Adam Air - who extrapolated to say that a dozen people survived - to senior aviation officials, and high-ranking military officials and police.
Descriptions were vivid, with officials saying corpses and debris from the plane were scattered over a 300 yard area of forest and jagged cliffs - highlighting the often unreliable and chaotic nature of disaster relief efforts in the world's largest archipelagic nation.
Eventually Transport Minister Hatta Radjasa acknowledged the news was based on rumors from villagers, sparking a series of reversals from other officials.
"The search and rescue team is still looking for the location," the minister told El-Shinta radio. "It has not yet been found."
Earlier, some people gathered at the airport collapsed when hearing reports about the high death toll. Others angrily banged on the door of the Adam Air office, demanding information.
Adam Air is one of at least a dozen budget carriers that have emerged in the country since 1999, when the industry was deregulated. The rapid expansion has led to cheap flights to scores of destinations around the sprawling nation, but has raised some safety concerns, since maintenance on the leased planes is reportedly poor.
The aviation authorities in Indonesia said the plane involved in Monday's disaster was 17 years old, had flown 45,371 hours and passed its last inspection on December 25th.
Adam Air, which began operations in 2003, was founded by Agung Laksono, the speaker of Indonesia's house of representatives and the company's chairman.
The flight went missing just two days after a ferry carrying more than 600 people sank in bad weather off the main island of Java. At least 200 were saved and rescuers were still finding survivors today, but some 400 were still unaccounted for.
A spokesman for Indonesian President Susilo Bambang Yudhoyono had issued a statement in Jakarta, shortly before news broke that the plane had not been found, saying the president wanted a full investigation into what went wrong.
"The president orders the transportation minister to evaluate and investigate this accident. The president also asked for an evaluation and investigation on the airworthiness of the plane and standard procedure on airplane operations," the statement said.