A Boeing B737-400 aircraft operated by Garuda Indonesia, overran a runway and burst into flames after landing at Yogyakarta. The plane, which had just arrived on a scheduled flight from Jakarta, was said to be carrying 133 passengers and 7 crew. Reuters says that 49 people were killed.BBC News is reporting that at least 93 have been accounted for. The BBC article also says that the plane was carrying Indonesian public figures and Australian government officials and journalists on their way to a meeting with the Australian foreign minister who is visiting Indonesia this week. Up to 10 Australians were aboard, "and not all of those have been accounted for."
More from the BBC:
The operations chief at Yogyakarta airport said the front wheel of the plane was on fire as it landed, causing it to veer off the runway and hit a boundary fence.CNN reports that a survivor described seeing flames outside the plane's window after it hit the ground and stopped suddenly:
He said an engine had then broken away from the plane and the fuselage burst into flames. The aircraft came to rest in the middle of paddy field.
"Things started to fall down [from the overhead bins] ... the smoke started to get in the plane. People were really panicked," Ruth Bamggadan told CNN.The CNN article has photos of the burned aircraft and a link to video footage of the accident site.
But the emergency door opened, and "quite a lot of people were able to get out of the plane," she said, calling the evacuation fairly orderly with passengers helping elderly women.
People sitting in the front of the plane were the last to get out, Bamggadan said, adding, "I think the emergency door was in the middle."
UPDATE: An Indonesian blogger, N. Firstavina, has posted the names of the crew who were aboard the Garuda Indonesia flight that crashed in Yogyakarta. She says:
The crews (based on Garuda's official) are Capt Marwoto Komar (Pilot) and Capt Gagam Syuman Rohmana (Co-pilot), Wiranto Wuryono (navigator?), Irawati (Senior Cabin Crew), Maryati (Senior Cabin Crew), Imam Arif Iskandar (Senior Cabin Crew), and Ratna Budiyanti (Junior Cabin Crew). It was not known how many crew survived the crash, but there are two bodies found in the pilot and co pilot seat, died with severe injury on their abdomen, they were suspected to have already died few moments after the plane hit the land.Click here to read the rest of the post about the accident on her blog, called Live and Learn.
