More than 100 feared dead after military aircraft crashes in Indonesia

More than 116 people are feared dead on Indonesia’s Sumatra island after a military aeroplane careered into the side of a building and burst into flames just minutes after takeoff.

Twelve crew members and 101 passengers, including military officers and family members, were on board the C-130 Hercules when it crashed after leaving an air force base in Medan, a city of two million.

Air marshal Agus Supriatna told local Metro TV news that all 113 people on board died. “No, no. No survivors,” he said when asked about the possibility, “I just returned from the site.”

Many passengers were likely to be family members of servicemen and women, said a spokesman for Medan air base from where the plane departed. At least one child has been confirmed as dead.

Search and rescue officials said that three people were killed on the ground when the 51-year-old Hercules plane crashed two minutes after takeoff from the Soewondo air force base en route to drop off supplies to the Natuna Islands in the South China Sea. It went down near a newly built residential area, hitting a massage parlour and a small hotel.

Police and rescue teams had pulled 84 bodies from the wreckage by Tuesday night and transported them to Adam Malik general hospital in Medan to be identified.

Police said rescuers were still trying to get into the ruined massage parlour, a three-storey building, and they did not know whether there were people inside.

Dramatic pictures of the scene showed the wreckage of the aircraft in flames and a crowd of onlookers amid the plumes of thick smoke.

“I saw the plane from the direction of the airport and it was tilting already, then I saw smoke billowing,” said resident, Januar, 26.

Other pictures showed the side of one building gutted by the impact of the crash and damage to nearby buildings and cars.

The commander of the Indonesian armed forces, General Moeldoko, has called for an investigation into the incident.

According to Supriatna, the Hercules aircraft was conducting a routine logistics operation. Made in 1964, the marshal said the aircraft was well maintained and was regularly used to transport personnel.

But angry legislators from the Indonesian parliamentary commission on defence called on the government to replace its ageing military aircraft. Supriatna said the military was grounding some of its Hercules planes.

“We in the commission ask the government to buy new planes for the air force,” Pramono Aung told the Jakarta Post. “The current fleet is mostly made up of old, poor-quality aircraft. It’s shameful that our soldiers still have to use them.”

The disaster has once again shone a harsh light on Indonesia’s poor aviation safety record. It came just six months after an AirAsia plane crashed into the Java Sea, killing all 162 people on board.

It is the sixth fatal crash involving an Indonesian air force plane in the past decade, according to the Aviation Safety Network.

In the late 1990s and mid-2000s, a string of fatal aeroplane crashes in Indonesia was blamed on the US military embargo put in place because of human rights abuses perpetrated in East Timor.

The embargo forced the Indonesian military to seek spare parts for its hardware elsewhere and fly planes that were in poor condition, but the embargo was lifted a decade ago.

Indonesian aviation analyst, Gerry Soejatman, said: “We don’t have an arms embargo so why is there a crash?”. The hangars are full with those [aircraft] that are not airworthy ... The ones that are flying have to be kept airworthy. The air force is pretty strict about it now, as compared to 10 years ago.”

No details have been released regarding whether mechanical or human error led to the crash, but a witness said the plane was emitting smoke from at least one of its engines.

In 2009, an Indonesian air force Hercules hit four houses before skidding into a rice field, killing 95 people on board and two on the ground, according to the Aviation Safety Network.

In December, an Airbus A320 run by AirAsia crashed on a flight from Indonesia to Singapore, killing all 162 people on board.