Indonesian Air Force Fokker F-27 turboprop Aircraft crashed

An Indonesian military aircraft crashed into a housing complex in East Jakarta Thursday, killing nine people and injuring 13 others, a military spokesman said.

The plane hit eight houses in an Air Force compound, China's official Xinhua news agency reported.

Six of the dead were on board the plane while three others died when the aircraft slammed into eight homes igniting a huge fireball.

The Fokker 27 turboprop was on a training flight when it went down near the Halim Perdanakusuma military airport, Britain's Sky News reported.

The plane apparently ran into a problem while trying to land, The Jakarta Globe said.

The crash occurred at the Rajawali housing complex near the airport, the Post reported.

An Indonesian air force plane crashed into a military housing complex in Jakarta on Thursday, killing six crew members on board and critically injuring at least five other people, officials said.

"Six out of the seven crew were killed and one was critically injured," air force spokesman Asman Yunus told AFP, adding that the surviving crew member was in hospital.

Military spokesman Iskandar Sitompul said: "Four people on the ground have also been taken to hospital and are in intensive care."

The Fokker-27 crashed into the housing complex in the Halim Perdanakusuma military airport compound at 2: 45 p.m. after taking off from the same airport at 1: 10 p.m.

"The aircraft was conducting training and there were no passengers aboard," said Yunus, who also told Metro TV that the plane crashed on eight houses.

An AFP correspondent at Halim said fire fighters on dozens of trucks extinguished a blaze that ripped through homes creating a thick cloud of smoke, and that the plane's wing appeared to be sticking out from the roof of a house.

Yunus said the military would look into the cause of the crash. The Fokker-27 was more than 20 years old, Sitompul said.

Indonesia is in the process of updating its aging military aircraft and equipment, procuring Russian and American warplanes, boats for its navy and parts for its transport planes.

The sprawling archipelago relies heavily on air transport but has one of the world's poorest aviation safety records, and military aircraft crashes are relatively common.

In early May, a Russian Sukhoi jet on a promotional demonstration flight slammed into a dormant volcano in Java, killing all 45 aboard.

A New Zealand pilot and two Indonesians were killed in March after a helicopter chartered by the Indonesian arm of U.S. mining company Freeport-McMoRan crashed in remote Papua province.


Source: Jakarta, 22 June 2012 - Agency News

Photo: Indonesian military personnel investigate the site where an Indonesia air force plane crashed in Jakarta on Thursday. The Indonesian Air Force Fokker F-27 turboprop Aircraft crashed into homes in the capital Thursday during a routine training flight. (Photo by Teguh Windharto, The Associated Press , Agence France-Presse)

(6/22/2012)