Indonesian military plane crashes into neighborhood, killing scores
MEDAN, Indonesia – Rescuers with heavy machinery searched a shattered residential neighborhood Tuesday for survivors from an Indonesian air force transport plane that crashed shortly after takeoff.
North Sumatra police major A. Tarigan said more than 140 bodies had been recovered.
The C-130 Hercules, carrying 122 people, including military personnel and their families, went down in Indonesia’s third-largest city of Medan, striking a building. Witness accounts suggested the plane suffered an engine fire before crashing.
The crash of the transport plane, which had been in service since 1964, occurred only two minutes after it took off from Soewondo air force base around midday.
The pilot told the control tower that he needed to turn back because of engine trouble, said air force chief Air Marshal Agus Supriatna.
“The plane crashed while it was turning right to return to the airport,” he said.
Many passengers were relatives of military personnel. Hitching rides on military planes to reach remote destinations is common in Indonesia, a sprawling archipelago that spans three time zones.
Indonesia has a patchy civil aviation safety record and its cash-strapped air force has also suffered a series of accidents. From 2007 to 2009, the European Union barred Indonesian airlines from flying to Europe because of safety concerns.
The country’s most recent civilian airline disaster was in December, when an AirAsia jet with 162 people on board crashed into the Java Sea en route from Surabaya to Singapore. There have been five fatal crashes involving air force planes since 2008, according to the Aviation Safety Network, which tracks aviation disasters.
Fahmi Sembiring, of Medan, said he saw the gray Hercules flying very low as he was driving.
“Flames and black smoke were coming from the plane in the air,” he said.
Sembiring said he stopped not far from the crash site and saw several people rescued by police, security guards and bystanders.
Another man, Janson Halomoan Sinagam, said several of his relatives were on the plane.
“We just want to know their fate,” he told MetroTV, weeping. “But we have not yet received any information from the hospital.”
Supriatna said there were more than 100 passengers and a crew of 12 on the plane before it reached Medan. It had traveled from the capital, Jakarta, and stopped at two locations before arriving in Medan, a city of 3.4 million people.
It was the second time in 10 years that an airplane has crashed into a Medan neighborhood. In September 2005, a Mandala Airlines Boeing 737 crashed into a crowded residential community shortly after takeoff from Medan’s Polonia airport, killing 143 people including 30 on the ground.