Indonesia welcomes foreign countries' assistance to help find missing air plane

Indonesian President Susilo Bambang Yudhoyono highly welcomed the offer of Singaporean and U.S. air forces to help find the Adam Air aircraft which went missing on January 1, 2007.

"The president agreed to the offer, but the help should be rendered under coordination of the search and rescue team (SAR) in Makassar," Antara news agency on Thursday quoted Indonesian Defense Forces Commander Marshal Djoko Suyanto as saying.

He said this at the presidential office here on Wednesday evening after attending a limited cabinet meeting to discuss the search for victims of the sunken motor vessel KM Senopati and the missing Adam Air plane.

"Since the SAR has been operating in the last two days, no result has been achieved. We need more sophisticated technology to find the missing aircraft and its passengers," he said.

Singaporean Air Force aircraft had arrived on Wednesday evening at about 20:00 local time. Earlier it was reported that Singapore sent Fokker-50 planes for maritime patrol operations.

In the meantime, the assistance offered by the U.S. air force aircraft based in the Pacific will be discussed on Thursday. The Boeing 737-400 with 96 passengers and six crews on board which went missing on a flight from Surabaya to Manado on Monday afternoon was reported still air worthy.

Meteorology and Geophysics Agency (BMG) officials issued a weather forecast to the air traffic controllers every hour.

General Manager of the airport management company PT. Angkasa Pura Budiharto said Adam Air had been warned of a storm in the waters off Java island.

"But the decision whether or not a flight would be carried out is entirely in the hands of the pilot," Budiarto said.

In response to weather warning, Adam Air management denied speculation the pilot of the ill-fated plane ignored bad weather.

"We don't have the data about the weather when the aircraft disappeared from the radar screen. The data are with the BMG, but it was air-worthy," Adam Air executive vice president for safety Roby Watercampt said.

So far his office still did not know what had caused the disappearance and no report was available about a possible emergency landing, he said.

For the time being the ill-fated aircraft was reported missing when flying at an altitude of 35,000 feet and it dropped at coordinates of 3 degrees, 135 minutes, 257 seconds southern latitude and 0 degree, 119 minutes, 135 seconds eastern longitude or somewhere over the Mamuju region.

The last contact with the air control center in Makassar was at 13:53 local time but contact was lost at 16:07 local time.

"It is still unknown what had caused the plane to go missing. Who knows its position is on land," he said.

Source: Xinhua