Cargo plane carrying four missing in eastern Indonesia

Rimbun Air

Indonesian air traffic control has lost contact with a local cargo plane. The aircraft, with four people aboard, has not been heard from since shortly after take-off from the city of Timika, Straits Times reports. Alongside three crew members, a passenger and 1.7 tonnes of rice were aboard the Twin Otter, owned by Carpediem and operated by Rimbun Air, which launched last year. Search and rescue has been deployed but the region has a poor record when it comes to aviation safety, despite Indonesia’s overwhelming reliance on aircraft to connect its thousands of islands. In recent years, a military helicopter transporting 12 people has gone missing, still not to be found, while in 2016 a cargo aircraft crashed killing all four aboard.