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JAKARTA: A passenger jet with 102 people on board crashed after going missing between the Indonesian islands of Java and Sulawesi, leaving many dead, a military official and witnesses said on Tuesday.
The Boeing 737-400 crashed in a remote mountainous area of Sulawesi and was destroyed in the accident according to an aerial photograph, an Indonesian army officer told ElShinta radio.
About 90 people were found dead, according to villagers living close to the site of the accident.
The Adam Air plane had taken off Monday at 12:59 pm (0559 GMT) from the city of Surabaya on Java bound for Manado in northeast Sulawesi but disappeared from radar screens about halfway through the flight.
The jet was carrying 85 adult passengers, 11 children including four babies, and six crew.
The Surabaya airport duty manager had said there were no technical problems with the plane when it took off.
Air Transport Department director general Mohammad Iksan Tatang said they lost contact with the plane about an hour after it took off.
"We had lost contact and the plane had disappeared from radar at Makassar (in South Sulawesi) at 0707 GMT. It had lost contact at that position and disappeared from the screen," he said.
Tatang said he did not know what had happened but pointed out that the weather had been bad in recent days.
"We don't know for sure, but the weather in this region has been really bad, but before the plane took off they were fully aware of the weather conditions," Tatang said.
The area north of east Java has been subject to violent storms, with high winds since last weekend. The sinking of a ferry carrying 600 people off Java on Friday night has been blamed on bad weather.
Aircraft accidents are not rare in Indonesia, a vast archipelago nation stretching over 5,000 kilometres (3,100 miles).
Public and private Indonesian airlines have been repeatedly criticised over their poor safety records, repeated delays and bad management.
Privately owned Adam Air began operations in 2003 and serves mostly domestic routes, with Singapore and Malaysia's Penang as its only international destinations.
The company is a leading low-cost carrier in the competitive Indonesian market, marketing itself as a "boutique airline" placed between traditional budget firms and regular airlines.
Company president director Adam Suherman said in November that Adam Air planned to beef up its fleet by an additional 10 planes in 2007 to handle a projected rise in passenger numbers.
According to Adam Air's website, the carrier had 19 Boeing 737 jets in its fleet as of January 2006.
The airline expects to handle 11 million passengers in 2007, up from an estimated seven million in 2006.
Suherman had said the carrier would concentrate on its domestic market, which is still largely untapped. - AFP/so
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