Anger as Indonesia resumes search for airliner

MAKASSAR, Indonesia, January 3 (bdnews24.com /Reuters) - Indonesian rescuers launched new sea, land and air searches on Wednesday for a missing plane with 102 people aboard as anger grew over false official statements that its wreckage had been found.

Senior government officials apologised late on Tuesday for erroneously saying the 17-year-old Boeing 737-400, operated by budget carrier Adam Air, had been spotted in the mountains of Sulawesi island after disappearing in heavy rain on Monday.

Early reports that 12 people had survived were also officially denied, the general air of confusion prompting reactions of shock, dismay and even scorn from families of the missing passengers and crew.

"I feel fooled. This is what I call playing games with the feelings of the victims' relatives," said Peter Tolitton, whose brother was aboard the ill-fated plane.

"If up to the ministerial level the information is inaccurate, we doubt the credibility of the officials," Tolitton, a Jakarta resident who was flown by Adam Air to Makassar, told Reuters.

The plane was carrying 96 passengers and six crew. A copy of its manifest showed three passengers as non-Indonesians. The U.S. embassy in Jakarta said they were Americans.

After a day crammed with confusing information, rescuers resumed their search at daybreak on Wednesday using military planes in areas around the western coast of rugged Sulawesi island, where the plane emitted distress signals before all communication was lost.

The renewed effort, in the face of heavy rain and strong winds, was being coordinated from Makassar, Sulawesi's largest city, 1,400 km (875 miles) east of Jakarta.

Transport Minister Radjasa told reporters that naval ships had also been sent to the Makassar Strait between Sulawesi and Borneo in case the doomed plane had fallen into the sea.

"Our major obstacle is the weather which is quite a significant problem," he said.

An Indonesian air force official said the aircraft were searching areas between the Sulawesi coastal town of Majene and Toraja, a mountainous region popular with tourists.

However, much of it is covered with jungle and forest, and transportation and communication facilities can be poor at best.

Officials said the mistaken information about wreckage and survivors being found had come from reports from a local village that police then relayed to government agencies.

The confusion over the missing plane highlighted the logistical difficulties of dealing with disasters from quakes and volcanoes to floods and forest fire in an archipelago of 17,000 islands that stretches about as wide as the United States.

The Boeing lost contact with the ground on Monday about an hour before it was due to land in Manado in North Sulawesi.

Transport officials have insisted the plane, which had clocked up 45,371 flying hours, was airworthy and had no record of trouble.

The transport ministry said it had last evaluated the plane in December 2005, when it had passed all service checks. The aircraft was due to be checked again in late January.

Joseph Umar Hadi, an opposition member of the Indonesian parliament's transport commission, said officials should be held accountable for the mix-up.

Annual checks on planes operated by budget carriers were "very insufficient", he added.

"Crude competition among operators has created risks unknown by the public, whether it relates to maintenance or management that encourages thrift," he said.

Mustafa Kamal, an MP from the Prosperous Justice Party which is part of the ruling coalition, also chastised the government.

"We cannot always tolerate this kind of accident and never solve it. There has never been a strict punishment from the government to the airlines that make this mistake," he said.

Air travel in Indonesia, home to 220 million people, has mushroomed since the industry was liberalised following the Asian financial crisis in the late 1990s, enabling privately owned budget airlines to operate.

bdnews24.com/mhb/1516 hrs