Missing jet mystery deepens

2007-01-05 13:35

Jakarta - Officials say they are baffled they cannot find a trace of the missing Adam Air Boeing 737-400 despite marking its coordinates from an onboard Emergency Locator Beacon Aircraft (OLBA).

This as the massive, internationally-assisted search operation in Indonesia prepared to halt at nightfall and resume at daybreak on Saturday over an even wider area of Sulawesi Island.

"We're trying to find it but there's an 'X-factor' about it," said Ahmad, an official from the National Search and Rescue Agency in Makassar, the capital of South Sulawesi province and base of search and rescue operation.

Ahmad told Deutsche Presse-Agentur dpa that the beacon's signal was growing weaker as its battery came closer to exhausting, which would further hamper the massive land, sea and air search.

The Indonesian government has become so desperate to find the missing budget carrier flight, which disappeared on Monday, they have called in psychics and actually deployed search teams to locations that the paranormal experts suggested, but nothing was found.

"We are using a coordinates map and a psychic map, but neither has worked," Ahmad said.

Four Indonesian Navy warships carrying amphibious troops and divers were sent to Sulawesi Island to bulk up what has already been a massive operation, which on Saturday will expand further north and east of the large, octopus-like island.

The US is assisting by conducting offshore satellite imaging, and a Singaporean naval ship joined in the search on Thursday.

Adam Air flight KI-574 was carrying 96 passengers, including three US citizens, and a crew of six when it disappeared on Monday afternoon in bad weather.

Conflicting information hampers progress

Rescue officials are increasingly frantic about finding the plane, which senior officials had erroneously reported was spotted along with 12 survivors on Tuesday morning. The false reports delayed expanding the search into the Makassar Strait by at least one day and enraged grieving relatives of the passengers.

Military and civilian rescue teams have been hampered by inclement weather and are not equipped to search at night.

The response to the missing plane has exposed Indonesia's limited emergency response capabilities and bureaucratic incompetence. Officials had previously said the jetliner disappeared after issuing a distress signal, but they later admitted that there had been no distress call.

Government officials on Tuesday were forced to retract earlier statements that a crash site had been located in a remote, mountainous region near the town of Polewali Mandar, about 1 600 kilometres north-east of Jakarta, and that 12 people had survived while 90 bodies had been accounted for.

President Susilo Bambang Yudhoyono has ordered an investigation into the condition of all commercial planes in Indonesia, as well as an evaluation of the nation's transportation system.

- SAPA