Indonesia:Contact was lost yesterday with an Adam Air Boeing 737-400 plane flying between Indonesian islands with 96 passengers and six crew on board, Indonesian officials said.
The plane was flying from Surabaya on Java island to Manado on Sulawesi island. Tatang Ikhsan, director general at the transport ministry, said on Elshinta radio that the flight had originated in Jakarta with a stop in Surabaya.
It left Surabaya at 1pm (6am GMT) and was scheduled to land just over two hours later in Manado in North Sulawesi.
Contact was lost when the plane was at an altitude of 35,000 feet, about one hour before it was due to land, Mr Ikhsan said.
He later told a news conference that a Singapore satellite picked up a distress signal from a plane 83 nautical miles northwest of Makassar, the capital of South Sulawesi province.
"We call on other flights which crossed this route to provide information on any distress signal," he said.
Transport minister Hatta Rajasa said the plane had been sighted above the Mamuju forest on Sulawesi.
An Adam Air Boeing 737-300 plane was forced to make an emergency landing in February at a small airport in East Nusa Tenggara province after a navigational failure caused the pilot to lose contact with the destination airport in Makassar.
- (Reuters)