Cargo plane carrying four missing in eastern Indonesia

TIMIKA, Indonesia - An Indonesian cargo plane with four people on board lost contact with air traffic control on Wednesday, an official said, the latest incident to hit the country's poor aviation record.

The Twin Otter DHC6-400, set off from the city of Timika on Wednesday at 10:39 am (0239 GMT) and was headed to Ilaga, a mountainous region in the remote eastern province of Papua and was scheduled to arrive 50 minutes after taking off.

"After 2.5 hours, there has been no information from the nearest airport on the plane's whereabouts, we decided to announce the plane has lost contact," local transportation agency head, Yan Purba told Metro TV.

The aircraft was carrying three crew members and one passenger as well as 1.7 tons of rice.

Search and rescue have been assembled for the missing plane which was flying in a good weather condition, Purba said.

Indonesia relies heavily on air transport to connect its thousands of islands, but mountainous Papua is a particularly difficult area to reach.

The country has a poor aviation safety record and Papua is a particularly problematic place to fly due to its mountainous terrain and frequent poor weather.

In June, a military helicopter with 12 people on board lost contact just minutes after it took off from a remote Papua district Oksibil, to Sentani, also in Papua.

The remains of the aircraft have not been found to this day.

Earlier in 2016, a cargo plane carrying construction materials crashed in Ilaga, killing all four people on board.

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Air Canada flight diverted to Hawaii after turbulence, minor injuries reported

MONTREAL, Canada—An Air Canada flight was diverted on Thursday to Hawaii after a sudden case of severe turbulence left 35 customers with minor injuries, the carrier said in a statement.

Flight AC33, carrying 269 passengers and 15 crew, was flying from Vancouver to Sydney, Australia, when the Boeing 777 aircraft "encountered unforecasted and sudden turbulence approximately 2 hours past Hawaii," the carrier said.

The plane was diverted to Honolulu and landed at 12:45 pm EST.

"As a precaution, medical personnel are on standby to examine passengers in Honolulu," the carrier said.

The carrier's initial reports were of 25 people with minor injuries.

A case of severe turbulence in June on a flight from Kosovo to France was captured on video, showing a flight attendant hitting the ceiling and another praying.

In another case, 29 people were injured after a Turkish Airlines flight encountered severe turbulence on its approach to New York's John F. Kennedy International Airport in March.

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17 hurt as plane skids off Myanmar runway

YANGON, Myanmar - A Biman Bangladesh Airlines plane skidded off the runway when it landed in bad weather at Yangon's international airport on Wednesday evening, injuring at least 17 people, officials said.

The Bombardier Dash 8 aircraft was carrying 29 passengers and 4 crew when it bounced while landing during heavy winds in Myanmar's commercial capital, Bangladesh's ambassador said. The plane was severely damaged.

The 17 who sustained mostly minor injuries were admitted to a local hospital, Manjurul Karim Khan Chowdhury told Reuters.

"The main reason, the pilot told me, was the weather – crosswinds," he said. "When he was trying to land... suddenly the aircraft jumped, went up and went down heavily."

A photo published by the Myanmar Times showed the plane halfway off the runway with its fuselage apparently broken.

Shakil Miraj, general manager for Biman Bangladesh, also blamed bad weather for the crash.

The airline flies between Yangon and Bangladesh's capital Dhaka 4 days a week.

A spokesman for Myanmar's Department of Civil Aviation declined to comment, saying the department had not received a report of the incident from the ground.

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41 feared dead in Russian plane blaze disaster: investigators

MOSCOW -- Forty-one people including at least 2 children are believed to have died when a Russian passenger plane made an emergency landing and was engulfed in flames at Moscow's busiest airport Sunday, investigators said.

Dramatic footage shared on social media showed Aeroflot's Sukhoi Superjet 100 aircraft, land at Sheremetyevo international airport, flames and black smoke pouring from its fuselage.

Passengers could be seen leaping onto an inflatable slide at the front and running from the blazing plane as huge black columns of smoke billowed into the sky.

"There were 78 people including crew members on board the plane," the Investigative Committee said in a statement, adding it had headed to the northwest Russian city of Murmansk.

"According to the updated info which the investigation has as of now, 37 people survived."

Another 11 people were injured, Dmitry Matveyev, the Moscow region's health minister said earlier in the day. Three of them had been hospitalized but they were not in a serious condition, he added.

Investigators said they were looking into various lines of inquiry and it was premature to draw any conclusions about the cause of the accident.

Russian President Vladimir Putin had offered his condolences to the victims' loved ones, his spokesman Dmitry Peskov said.

Prime Minister Dmitry Medvedev has also ordered a special committee to investigate the disaster.

The jet carrying 73 passengers and five crew members had just left Sheremetyevo when the crew issued a distress signal, officials said.

"Flight Su-1492 took off on schedule at 6:02 pm," said a statement from the airport.

"After the take-off, the crew reported an anomaly and decided to come back to the departure airport. At 6:30 pm, the aircraft made an emergency landing," it added.

The tabloid newspaper Komsomolskaya Pravda quoted one passenger, Petr Egorov, who said: "We had just taken off and the aircraft was hit by lightning.... The landing was rough, I almost passed out from fear."

"The plane sent out a distress signal after takeoff," a source told Interfax news agency.

"It attempted an emergency landing but did not succeed the first time, and on the second time the landing gear hit (the ground), then the nose did, and it caught fire," the source added.

Interfax, citing an anonymous source, said the plane had landed with its fuel tanks full because, having lost contact with air traffic controllers, it was too dangerous to dump its fuel tanks over Moscow.

Several flights have been diverted to other Moscow airports or Nizhny Novgorod, some 500 kilometers (310 miles) east of the Russian capital.

The Sukhoi Superjet-100 was the first civilian aircraft developed in Russia's post-Soviet era and at the time of its launch, in 2011, was a source of national pride.

But it struggled to convince buyers from airlines outside Russia, and several foreign carriers that did buy it have since preferred to cut back its use or phase it out completely, citing its reliability.

The Russian government offered subsidies to encourage Russian airlines to buy the Superjet and Aeroflot became its main operator. 

In September 2018, it announced a record order of 100 Superjet-100s.

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'Miracle' as passengers safe after plane skids into Florida river

MIAMI -- Dozens of shocked passengers were evacuated to safety from the wings of a stricken Boeing 737 on Saturday in Florida after the jet made a rough landing in a lightning storm and skidded off the runway into a river. 

The plane carrying 143 people including crew from Guantanamo Bay in Cuba slammed into shallow water next to a naval air station in Jacksonville after a hard landing that saw the plane bounce and swerve down the runway, passengers said.

No fatalities or critical injuries were reported.

"As we went down... the plane bounced and screeched and bounced more and lifted to the right and then it lifted to the left," Cheryl Bormann, a defense attorney who was on board the flight, told CNN.

"And then it sort of swerved and then it came to a complete crash stop."

Some oxygen masks deployed and overhead lockers flew open during the landing, she added.

Twenty-one adults were taken to local hospitals, but none were critically injured, the Jacksonville sheriff's office said on Twitter. Others were treated for minor injuries at the scene. 

Captain Michael Connor, commanding officer at Naval Air Station Jacksonville, told reporters it was a "miracle" no more serious injuries or fatalities had occurred.

"We could be talking about a different story this evening, so I think there's a lot to say about, you know, the professionalism of the folks that helped the passengers off the airplane... it very well could be worse," he said.

All 136 passengers and seven aircrew on board had been accounted for, NAS Jacksonville said in a statement.

However, there were fears for a number of pet animals traveling in the plane's luggage compartment. 

The pets had "not been retrieved yet due to safety issues with the aircraft," NAS Jacksonville said in an update on Facebook.

The National Transportation Safety Board said a 16-member team had arrived on site to investigate the incident, and would brief the media later in the day.

Boeing said it was aware of the incident was and providing technical assistance to the agency as it conducts its probe.

'LIGHTNING AND THUNDER' 

Images showed the Miami Air International plane lying partially submerged in water after the rough landing, with its nose cone missing.

Passengers in life vests were instructed to clamber onto the wings of the jet before being transported to shore aboard inflatable life rafts, Bormann said.

"We couldn't tell where we were, a river or an ocean. There was rain coming down. There was lightning and thunder. We stood on that wing for a significant period of time," she told CNN.

Navy security and emergency response personnel including some 90 firefighters were on the scene.

Jacksonville Mayor Lenny Curry tweeted that the White House had called to offer assistance as the situation was developing.

"All alive and accounted for. Our Fire and Rescue teams are family to all," said Curry.

Teams were working to control jet fuel spilling into the St Johns River, he added.

The "Rotator" flight from the US military base in Cuba carries passengers including military personnel and family members.

The plane involved was a Boeing 737-800, in operation for 18 years, according to the FlightRadar24 website.

US aerospace giant Boeing is under scrutiny following 2 crashes that killed a total of 346 passengers and crew and grounded its newer 737 MAX planes worldwide.

Both a Lion Air crash in Indonesia in October and March's Ethiopian Airlines crash outside Addis Ababa occurred shortly after takeoff.

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Air India plane hits building at Stockholm airport

STOCKHOLM - An Air India plane carrying 179 passengers struck a building at Stockholm's Arlanda airport with its wingtip as it taxied to gate on Wednesday, but no injuries were reported, police said.

"The 179 passengers could disembark from the plane on a mobile staircase and thereafter enter the terminal," police wrote in a statement.

The cause of the accident was not immediately known, police said.

It occurred at 5:45 pm (1645 GMT), about 50 meters (yards) from Terminal 5, the main terminal for international flights.

Pictures from the scene showed the Boeing aircraft parked on the runway with the very tip of its left wing stuck in the side of a building.

Several police cars and fire trucks were parked by the plane.

According to airport operator Swedavia's website, the flight had originated in New Delhi.

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FBI seeks motive after US airline worker steals plane, crashes it

Federal authorities on Saturday were seeking to learn what drove an airline worker to steal an empty airplane from Seattle's airport in a security scare that caused the scrambling of US fighter jets and ended when the plane crashed.

A Horizon Air ground service agent got into a Bombardier Q400 turboprop aircraft on Friday night in a maintenance area at Seattle-Tacoma International Airport and took off, Horizon sister carrier Alaska Airlines said.

He flew for about one hour, often erratically with attempts at aerial stunts, before crashing onto sparsely populated Ketron Island in Puget Sound, some 40 kilometers to the southwest.

The 29-year-old man, who has not been officially identified, was suicidal and appeared to have acted alone, according to authorities. He was believed to have been killed in the crash.

Relatives and co-workers identified the man as Richard Russell of Sumner, Wash., who also went by the name Beebo.

"He was a faithful husband, a loving son, and a good friend," the Russell family said in a statement.

"This is a complete shock to us. We are devastated by these events and Jesus is truly the only one holding this family together right now," the family said.

Russell was not known to have had a pilot's license, Horizon Air Chief Executive Gary Beck said at a news conference, and it was not clear how he was able to take off and fly as he did.

"There were some maneuvers that were done that were incredible maneuvers with the aircraft," Beck said. "Commercial aircraft are complex machines. They're not as easy to fly as, say, a Cessna 150, so I don't know how he achieved the experience that he did," Beck said.

The local sheriff's department said on Twitter that either doing stunts "or lack of flying skills" caused the crash.

In partial recordings of Russell's conversations with air traffic controllers that were published online by Broadcastify.com, he said he was sorry to disappoint people who cared about him and described himself as a "broken guy."

"Got a few screws loose, I guess," Russell is heard saying in the recording. "Never really knew it until now."

He also admired the sunset, complained of lightheadedness, and asked whether he would go to prison if he landed safely.

He had worked for Horizon Air for 3-1/2 years and had clearance to tow planes, Alaska Airlines Chief Executive Brad Tilden said at the news conference.

Tilden said airplanes of that type do not have doors that lock or ignition keys like cars.

"The setup in aviation in America is we secure the airfield and then we have the mindset that we have employees that are credentialed and authorized to be there," Tilden said, adding that the airline was working with authorities to investigate.

The FBI is leading the probe, which also includes the Federal Aviation Administration and the National Transportation Safety Board.

"We are going to be thorough, which means taking the time needed to scour the area, delve into the background of the individual believed responsible, and review every aspect of this incident with all appropriate public & private partners," the FBI said in a statement.

Two F-15 fighter jets took to the air from a base in Portland, Oregon, and were on the scene within minutes. The jets were armed but did not open fire, North American Aerospace Defense Command spokesman Cameron Hillier said by phone.

Instead, the F-15 pilots and air traffic controllers tried to guide the plane west, away from populated areas, said Hillier. No one was hurt on the ground, authorities said.

It was unclear how the employee was able to taxi the plane on a runway and take off without authorization.

The Bombardier Q400 turboprop is designed for short-distance flights and can seat 76 passengers, Alaska Air said.

(Reporting by Brendan O'Brien in Milwaukee and Alex Dobuzinskis in Los Angeles Additional reporting by Jon Herskovitz in Austin, Texas; Editing by Steve Orlofsky and Kim Coghill)

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EgyptAir flight from Paris to Cairo disappears from radar: airline

CAIRO, Egypt - An EgyptAir flight from Paris to Cairo with 69 people on board has vanished from radar, the airline said on its verified Twitter feed Thursday.

A tweet on the airline's official account said flight MS804 left Paris at 23:09 pm local time (2109 GMT), "heading to Cairo (and) has disappeared from radar".

Further tweets in Arabic said contact was lost at 02:45 Cairo time (0045 GMT), when the plane was just inside Egyptian airspace and at an altitude of 37,000 feet (11,000 metres).

There were 59 passengers and 10 crew aboard, according to the airline.

"EGYPTAIR has contacted the concerned authorities and bodies and inspection is underway through the rescue teams," another tweet in English said.

An EgyptAir flight from Alexandria to Cairo was hijacked in March and forced to divert to Cyprus, where the "unstable" hijacker demanded to see his ex-wife.

He surrendered after a six-hour airport standoff, which ended peacefully.

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Coming soon: Star Wars-themed planes

MIAMI - All Nippon Airways Co. may fly at least two Star Wars-themed planes on international routes, instead of the previously announced one, ANA President Osamu Shinobe said Sunday.

A Boeing 787-9 Dreamliner aircraft painted like popular robot character R2-D2 and carrying the Star Wars logo will begin operating this fall. The possible additional Star Wars-themed plane may feature a character other than R2-D2, he said.

"The project has gained great feedback. We may increase the number of planes if it proves popular," Shinobe said in an interview with Kyodo News in Miami.

The ANA president also said among the candidate routes for the R2-D2 jet are ones linking Tokyo's Haneda airport and Jakarta, and Haneda and Munich, Germany.

ANA will fly the aircraft to start its five-year Star Wars project leading up to 2020.

The new movie, Star Wars: The Force Awakens, will be released in December.

==Kyodo

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LOOK: A 'Fast & Furious' plane

Universal Pictures has recently unveiled the luxury Fast & Furious 777 airliner at Los Angeles International Airport. Actor-producer Vin Diesel was on hand as Etihad Airways Flight 171 arrived from Abu Dhabi to kick off the global junket and world premiere of "Furious 7."

The newly decaled Boeing 777 will fly the direct route between Abu Dhabi and Los Angeles.

Abu Dhabi is a key location for "Furious 7." Over the course of two weeks in April 2014, the team filmed in areas outside Abu Dhabi in the Liwa Desert, as well as in the city center at such locations as the Sheikh Zayed Grand Mosque, Emirates Palace hotel, the Yas Marina F1 race circuit and the Etihad Towers.

“We are pleased to work together with Universal, an organization which shares that same spirit of innovation and reimagination when it comes to the world of entertainment, to unveil our newly decaled Boeing 777 aircraft in support of the Fast & Furious franchise, and
'Furious 7' which premieres next month and highlights our airline’s home of Abu Dhabi,” Peter Baumgartner, chief commercial officer of Etihad Airways, said in a statement released on Thursday.

“When we began filming 'The Fast and the Furious' in 2000, if you told me that we would one day have our logo on a wide-body jet, I would have said you were crazy,” quipped producer Neal H. Moritz, who has shepherded all seven films in the series.

The Fast & Furious decal will remain on the plane for the next four to six months.

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Five feared dead in Australia plane crash

BRISBANE - Five people are feared dead after a light plane crashed at an airfield in eastern Australia on Saturday, emergency service workers said.

The plane, used for skydiving, took off before veering left, crashing and bursting into flames at Caboolture, 50 kilometers (31 miles) north of Brisbane.

"We received a call from the airfield and sent three crews to a light plane that had crashed," a Queensland Fire and Rescue Service official told AFP. "The fire was extinguished in 10 minutes."

Queensland Police said: "It is believed that five people were on board and that all are deceased."

Bryan Carpenter, who works at the airfield, said the plane was a Cessna 206, which carried between five and six people on skydiving flights.

He told Sky News the burning high-octane fuel destroyed the plane within just one minute.

"On impact with the ground (the plane) immediately burst into flames and there were no survivors," he said.

"This is the worst-ever fatality accident we've suffered (at Caboolture)."

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