113 people feared dead in Indonesia plane crash

MEDAN, Indonesia (3RD UPDATE) –  All 113 on board an Indonesian air force transport plane that crashed Tuesday, June 30, into a major city on Sumatra are believed to have been killed, the country’s air force chief said.

There were 12 crew and 101 passengers on the Hercules C-130 when it went down and burst into flames in a residential area of Medan city, Agus Supriatna told AFP.

Asked if he believed anyone had survived, he said: “No, no. No survivors. I just returned from the site.” He also said 49 bodies had so far been recovered and taken to the hospital.

Buildings were left in ruins and cars reduced to flaming wrecks after the plane came down in Medan, a city of two million.

A rescue operation swung into action, with ambulances ferrying bodies from the accident site, and crowds of anxious residents gathering around a police cordon to have a look at the smouldering wreckage of the plane. 

Novi, an employee of an international school near the accident site who goes by one name, said she heard the aircraft and from her office window saw it flying very low before it crashed.

“It was very scary,” she told AFP, adding she rushed to the site with her colleagues and the wreckage and plumes of smoke looked “very bad”.

Another local resident Januar, 26, said the aircraft appeared to be in trouble just before the accident.

“I saw the plane from the direction of the airport and it was tilting already, then I saw smoke billowing.”

Medan’s police chief described the bodies as “crushed by debris of the buildings and the fuselage”.

Poor air safety record 

He said these additional people were “mostly families of military officers, especially those who are moving as they were assigned to another area”.

It was unclear if there were any victims on the ground, or how many. The crash was in a newly built residential area and officials were unsure if people were in the buildings at the time of the accident.

The plane took off at 12:08 pm (0508 GMT) from the airbase and crashed in the city about two minutes later, about five kilometres (three miles) from the base, according to the military.

It was the second time in a decade that Medan had suffered a fatal plane accident. A Mandala Airlines domestic flight crashed shortly after take-off in 2005 into a densely populated suburb, killing at least 150 including passengers, crew and people on the ground.

Medan is the biggest Indonesian city outside the main island of Java and is a major economic centre. 

The Indonesian air force has suffered accidents before. 

At least 11 people were killed when a Fokker-27 military jet crashed into a housing complex in the capital Jakarta in June 2012. 

In April an F-16 fighter jet caught fire as it was about to take off from an airbase in Jakarta, prompting the pilot to jump to safety as flames and thick smoke engulfed the plane.  (READ: Indonesian fighter jet catches fire on runway, pilot jumps to safety)

The pilot escaped with minor injuries from the jet, which had been due to provide security at a summit of Asian and African leaders in Indonesia. 

Indonesia also has a poor civil aviation safety record, and has suffered many fatal crashes in the past.

An Indonesia AirAsia plane crashed in December en route from Indonesia’s Surabaya to Singapore, killing all 162 people on board.  – Ardi Ibrahim, AFP/Rappler.com