Lost airliner found! Oh, um actually...

[Richard_Pearse]

Reports started coming in yesterday that a Boeing 737, operated by Indonesian low cost company Adam Air and carrying 102 people, was missing and about 5 hours overdue.

Later we hear that the wreckage of the aircraft has been found in mountains and that it apparently crashed in bad weather. Also, there are 12 survivors.

Police Chief Col. Genot Hariyanto earlier said rescue teams arrived at the crash site. Setyo Raharjo, head of the National Commission on Transportation Safety, said 90 bodies were found near the wreckage and that the search for the 12 others 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, 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 forests and jagged cliffs, highlighting the often unreliable and chaotic nature of disaster relief efforts in the world’s largest archipelagic nation.

But then we find that these highly detailed reports were a little less than accurate.

Eventually, Transport Minister Hatta Radjasa acknowledged the news was based on rumors from villagers, sparking a series of reversals from other officials.

…First Air Marshal Eddy Suyanto, commander of Hasanuddin air base in Makassar, South Sulawesi’s provincial capital, said: “The location has not been found. We apologise that the news that we conveyed was not true.”

I know that lines of communication can get confused during something like this, but this is a bit much isn’t it?

WTOP | Washington’s Top News | DC, MD & VA News, Traffic & Weather

Indonesian plane still lost

[Cunctator]

I heard about the retraction on the news this morning. Pretty sad. I wonder what sparked the villagers’ rumours? Are there so many wrecked aeroplanes lying around in the forests of Indonesia?