I

ndonesian authorities on Saturday said they were still unable to locate the Aviastar plane that has been declared missing in South Sulawesi since Friday despite massive search and rescue efforts carried out during the first 24 hours after the incident.

National Search and Rescue Agency (Basarnas) chief Bambang Soelistyo said a joint SAR team comprising more than 125 people had been deployed on Saturday morning to conduct both air and ground searches. The efforts, however, failed to obtain any significant leads as of Saturday evening.

'€œWe have failed in our search [mission]. Up to now, [we] have yet to find the approximate location where the Aviastar airplane crashed,'€ Bambang said.

On Friday, a DHC-6 Twin Otter light aircraft, operated by the country'€™s Aviastar airline, reportedly lost contact during a flight from Masamba, South Sulawesi, to the provincial capital of Makassar.

The Aviastar PK-BRM airplane, which was carrying 10 people on board, left Masamba'€™s Andi Djemma Airport at 2:25 p.m. local time and was scheduled to arrive in Makassar'€™s Sultan Hasanuddin International Airport at 3:39 p.m.

The 34-year-old Canadian-made airplane reportedly made its last contact with Andi Djemma Airport 11 minutes after takeoff when it was flying at 8,000 feet, not 800 feet as reported earlier.

The airplane was finally declared missing at 4:30 p.m.

Apart from pilot Iri Afriadi, co-pilot Yudhistira and engineer Sukris, five adult passengers, identified as Nurul Fatimah, Lisa Falentin, Riza Arman, Sakhi Arqam, Muhammad Natsir, and Nurul'€™s two babies, Afif and Raya, were also on board the missing aircraft.

The SAR team, according to Bambang, also failed to detect a signal from the aircraft'€™s emergency locator transmitter (ELT) device on Saturday. '€œWe have also asked neighboring countries [to assist], but the ELT [signal] has remained undetected,'€ he said.

The SAR team, Bambang added, had also expanded its search area from an initial four sectors to six, covering a total 900-square-nautical-mile area in several regencies, including Luwu, Tana Toraja and Enrekang.

'€œSome 80 percent of the first four sectors are mountainous and hilly areas, with many steep cliffs. Due to the [condition of] the weather, it was also not possible for a search plane to go up there. [It was] hazy,'€ he said.

Basarnas training and operation director Ivan Ahmad Titus said an Indonesian Army helicopter and two Aviastar airplanes had been deployed to support Saturday'€™s search mission.

'€œThe search will resume tomorrow [Sunday] morning. We will expand the search area. According to the plan, we will deploy five aircraft,'€ he said.

The families of the missing passengers, meanwhile, expressed hope that all people on board the aircraft would be found alive

'€œWe are still waiting and hoping that the SAR team will immediately locate the aircraft and that our dad is alive,'€ said Ahmad Afriadi, whose father, Muhammad Natsir, was among the 10 people in the aircraft.

Natsir, the head of the Seko pioneer airport in North Luwu, was heading to Makassar on Friday to catch another flight to Jakarta.

'€œHe was supposed to attend a meeting in Jakarta today [Saturday],'€ Ahmad said.

Despite the ongoing search mission, South Sulawesi Police'€™s Disaster Victims Identification (DVI) team had asked family members to share physical descriptions of the missing passengers and their DNA samples to help the unit run ante-mortem identification.

'€œWe have prepared a team to handle [victim] identification should the aircraft and the victims finally be found,'€ South Sulawesi Police'€™s health and medical unit chief Sr. Comr. Harjuno said.

Aviastar is the only airline serving the Masamba-Makassar route, offering two flights per week on Friday and Saturday.

Aviastar owner Sugeng Triyono, meanwhile, said that the missing airplane was airworthy.

'€œThe plane was made in 1981, the engine is still okay. Last week, I also used the plane,'€ he said on Friday, as quoted by kompas.com.