Indonesian Plane Crash Kills 90 of 102 on Board

JAKARTA, Indonesia, Jan. 2 -- Rescuers on Tuesday found the smoldering wreckage of an Indonesian jetliner that went missing during a storm. Officials said 90 people were killed, while the remaining 12 aboard survived.

"The plane is destroyed, and many bodies are around there," said the local police chief, Col. Genot Hariyanto.

Air force Rear Cmdr. Eddy Suyanto told el-Shinta radio that the plane, operated by local carrier Adam Air, had crashed in a mountainous region of Polewali in western Sulawesi island.

Adam Air spokesman Hartono, who goes by one name, said 90 people were killed and 12 survived in Monday's crash of the Boeing 737-400. The survivors' conditions were not immediately known.

Adam Air Flight KI-574 was on a two-hour trip from Indonesia's main island of Java to Manado city, on the northern tip of Sulawesi, one of the largest islands in the archipelago.

Transportation Minister Hatta Radjasa said the first distress signal from the plane was picked up over Sulawesi about 470 miles southwest of Manado.

The second was detected over Majene, a coastal city 550 miles southwest of Manado, another aviation official said.

Weeks of seasonal rains and high winds in Indonesia have caused deadly floods, landslides and maritime accidents, including the sinking of a ferry in the Java Sea just before midnight Friday. That incident left at least 400 people dead or missing.

The passenger vessel capsized about 650 miles southwest of where the Adam Air plane disappeared, and naval ships and helicopters continued Monday to scour the choppy tropical waters for ferry survivors.

Radjasa said that contact with the plane had been lost when it was at about 35,000 feet and that the weather had been severe.

The 17-year-old plane carried six crew members and 96 passengers, including 11 children. Contact was lost about an hour before it was due to land, said national aviation chief Ichsan Tatang.

Hundreds of people gathered at the airport in Manado seeking information about missing relatives. Justin Tumurang, 25, was waiting at the airport to pick up her twin sister. "Being a twin, we share almost every feeling. I felt something was not right, and it grew worse. Now I feel pain," Tumurang said.

Similar scenes played out in the central Java port town of Rembang, where family members and friends awaited word on survivors of the capsized ferry. Many were losing hope as bodies continued to wash ashore.

Search and rescue operations were continuing, with nearly 200 survivors found, but a temporary morgue was set up at a port close to where the Senopati Nusantara went down. Hundreds of body bags were readied.

Boats are one of the main modes of transportation in Indonesia, which comprises more than 17,000 islands. But people are increasingly taking to the skies, in part because of the emergence of budget airlines. Adam Air is one of at least a dozen that have begun operating 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 many of the airlines are small and lease planes that are decades old.