Updated 20120621/1230UTC
Updated 20120621/1240UTC
The aircraft was seen doing a steep bank shortly before crashing (Photo by: Pasya) |
An Indonesian Air Force Fokker-27 crashed near Halim Airport in Jakarta this afternoon, Thursday 21 June 2012. The aircraft involved is reported to be A-2708, and the Air Force had since confirmed that there were 7 persons on board, all except the co-pilot had died, in addition to 3 known fatal ground casualties (2 children and 1 adult). The co-pilot is still in intensive care at the airbase’s hospital. There are also 4 other ground casualties still buried under the aircraft whose status is not yet known.
From eyewitness report, aircraft appeared to have crashed whilst trying to go-around. The witness, a former student pilot, reported that the aircraft’s left wing had dipped down just before touchdownon runway 06, which was then countered and the aircraft performed the go-around. Unfortunately, the change in direction brought the aircraft’s right wing ‘very close’ to the airport control tower. In an appeared attemted to avoid the collision with the control tower, aircraft banked to the left again and then crashed. NOTE: THIS EYEWITNESS INFO ABOVE CANNOT BE INDEPENDENTLY VERIFIED!
Several houses caught fire in this accident (source: Ahmad) |
The aircraft crashed into the air force base housing complex on the north side of the airport, destroying 6-8 houses and caused a fire. A photo of the aircraft shortly before the crash, shows a steep left bank with both engines running. However there are unconfirmed rumours that the aircraft had an engine failure with a failed propeller feathering. It is unclear at what stage in the flight did this occur.
Weather at Halim (latest METAR at 9am local time was: WIHH 210200Z 00000KT 5000 HZ NLC 28/23 Q1013 NOSIG) are not available but conditions were adequate for VMC flight with over 5 kilometers visibility and no low cloud. Around 1 hour prior to the accident, I also saw an Air Force C-130 Hercules performing high level circuits on the west side of Halim.
Several photos of the crash site has also come to surface.
(Source: Unknown) |
Total 11 people perished in this accident. The copilot died later after few hours of treatment.
http://regional.kompas.com/read/2012/06/21/19074294/Sempat.Selamat.Kopilot.Fokker-27.Meninggal