More than 100 people are feared dead after a military transport plane ploughed into a residential area shortly after take-off in northern Indonesia, in what may be the deadliest accident yet for an air force with a long history of crashes.
Officials said the plane plunged into a built-up area of the Sumatra city of Medan.
“For the moment we know there were 113 people [on board]. It looks like there are no survivors,” air marshal Agus Supriatna told Metro TV in the Sumatra city of Medan, adding that some of the passengers were air force families.
The C-130B Hercules aircraft crash, which went into service half a century ago, is bound to put a fresh spotlight on Indonesia’s air safety record and its ageing planes.
Eye-witnesses said the plane had appeared to explode shortly before it smashed into houses and a hotel.
An official at a nearby hospital who declined to be named said that 55 bodies had been brought in so far.
In the first hours after the crash officials had said that only a crew of 12 service personnel were on board.
Black smoke coming from the wreckage and crowds of people milling around the area initially hampered emergency services rushing to the scene.
“We have been using heavy equipment like earth movers to clear the wreckage of the plane,“ said Romali, chief of Medan’s search and rescue agency.
“We are still evacuating bodies from the rubble and we hope we can finish the operation tonight,” he told reporters.
The Hercules plane had been on its way from an air force base in Medan to Tanjung Pinang in Riau Islands off Sumatra.
Technical problems
Media said the pilot had asked to return to the base because of technical problems.
“It passed overhead a few times, really low,” said Elfrida Efi, a receptionist at the nearby Golden Eleven Hotel.
“There was fire and black smoke. The third time it came by it crashed into the roof of the hotel and exploded straight away,” she told reporters by telephone.
According to the Aviation Safety Network, there have been 10 fatal crashes involving Indonesian military or police aircraft over the last decade.
The incident follows the fatal AirAsia flight QZ8501, which crashed less than halfway into a two-hour flight from Surabaya in Indonesia to Singapore last December. All 162 people on board the Airbus A320 were killed.
“It‘s too early to say what caused today’s disaster, but it will again raise concerns about air safety in Indonesia, especially since it comes just half a year after the crash of QZ8501,” said Greg Waldron, Asia managing editor at Flightglobal, an aviation industry data and news service.
The Indonesian air force has now lost four C-130s, reducing its transport reach in an archipelago that stretches more than 5,000km from its western to eastern tips.
Air force spokesman Dwi Badarmanto said it was unclear what caused the crash and until the source of the incident was identified eight other C-130Bs would be grounded.
Although Indonesia accounted for nearly one-fifth of defence spending by southeast Asian countries last year, as a percentage of GDP it was the lowest in the region at 0.8 per cent, according to Stockholm International Peace Research Institute data.
Military spending
President Joko Widodo, who took office last year, has said he plans to double military spending to about €13.5 billion by 2020.
However, the transport plane accident could bring pressure on the president to spend more on modernising the air force.
“This incident shows us that we must renew our aircraft and our military equipment,” Pramono Anung, a lawmaker and member of the parliamentary commission overseeing defence, told reporters.
“The Hercules is already old, many of our other [weapons] systems are already old. As parliament we will support giving more funding to the military so that they can upgrade.”
Reuters