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US officials to help search for missing plane

US transport safety officials arrived in Indonesia's Sulawesi yesterday to help investigate the disappearance of an airliner last week in bad weather with 102 people aboard.

The pilot of the 17-year-old Boeing 737-400 did not issue a mayday call and there have been no emergency locator signals to help rescuers combing jungles, mountains and seas around Sulawesi to find the plane, operated by Indonesian budget carrier Adam Air.

In what officials said was his last conversation with air traffic control in Makassar, the pilot said the flight had encountered crosswinds and needed safe coordinates. Radar continued to track the flight for some time after that.

The aircraft encountered winds of 130kph and twice changed course, officials said.

Its last communication was a signal from its emergency locator beacon that a Singapore satellite picked up and relayed to Jakarta. Nothing has been heard since.

The US team will work with Indonesia's transport safety commission to investigate various aspects of the apparent crash, including engineering, operations and weather, Setyo Rahardjo, head of the transport safety commission, said.

"So far, the search for the plane has not yielded any clues," he said.

The six-member team consists of officials from the US National Transportation Safety Board, the US Federal Aviation Administration, Boeing and General Electric.

The plane left Surabaya on Indonesia's main island of Java on Monday for Manado, the provincial capital of North Sulawesi. Among the 96 passengers and six crew were a father and his two daughters from Bend, Oregon.

"Whatever happened to the plane, it was likely rapid and catastrophic," said Patrick Smith, a US-based airline pilot and aviation commentator, pointing to a possible massive structural failure due to metal fatigue or an onboard explosion.

He noted that in many accidents, "there are no distress calls simply because the cockpit crew is too busy dealing with the situation rather than calling around for help."

The search had initially concentrated in areas of western Sulawesi, where the last emergency signal was received, but was expanded to the north and east on Friday.

At least four Indonesian military planes, a Singapore air force Fokker-50 and a helicopter have been looking for the missing airliner, along with army and police ground teams and civilian and navy ships.

With no sign of the wreckage, rescuers extended their search south toward the resort island of Bali, believing that in the event of a sea crash strong currents may have washed debris or bodies hundreds of kilometers away, officials said. Teams also patrolled coasts further northeast.

"The military Boeing and Cassa planes have resumed their search and a helicopter has flown to Palu [the capital of Central Sulawesi]," Captain Ikoputra, an air force officer coordinating the search operation, said.

Indonesian President Susilo Bambang Yudhoyono has asked for full resources to be devoted to the hunt with no deadline.

Vice President Yusuf Kalla was due in Makassar later yesterday to meet relatives of the passengers.

The plane disappeared less than three days after a ferry capsized and sank off Indonesia's main island of Java.
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