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An Indonesia military airport official says a passenger plane missing for several hours probably crashed.
Rescue teams have been dispatched to look for the Adam Air flight with more than 100 people on board.
It sent out a distress signal in bad weather. The military airport chief in the region says the type of signal sent by the plane before it went missing indicated - in his words - "a big chance it had an accident or a crash."
Officials don't know if the plane went down in the sea, or on land. The Navy has been contacted about a possible sea rescue operation.
An Indonesian passenger plane carrying 102 people disappeared in stormy weather on Monday, and rescue teams were sent to search in the area where the aircraft sent out a distress signal.
Transport Minister Hatta Radjasa said a radio communication was picked up over central Sulawesi, an major island in the Indonesian archipelago about 470 miles from the Adam Air flight's destination. He said emergency crews were on their way to search for survivors.
"Let's hope the plane had an emergency landing," he told El-Shinta radio.
Eddy Suyanto, military airport chief in South Sulawesi, said the distress signal indicated "a big chance it had an accident or a crash."
Air traffic lost contact with flight KI-574 while it was flying at 35,000 feet from Indonesia's main island of Java to Sulawesi. It was still missing more than six hours after its scheduled arrival.
The plane - on a two-hour flight from East Java to Manado, on Sulawesi's northern tip - carried six crew and 96 passengers, including 11 children, Indonesia's El-Shinta radio reported.
Weeks of seasonal rains and high winds in Indonesia have caused several deadly floods, landslides and maritime accidents, including the sinking of a ferry in the Java Sea on Friday that has left dozens dead and some 400 still missing. That accident was hundreds of miles from the area where the Adam Air plane disappeared.
An Indonesian air traffic controller told Metro TV the plane hit "very bad" weather and may have run out of fuel because, if still airborne, it would be "over its (fuel) limit."
"This is an emergency," Bhabr, who like many Indonesians uses one name, told the broadcaster.
Adam Air, a privately owned low-cost airline, began operations in Indonesia several years ago and most of its flights are domestic. Last year, one of its jetliners lost all communication and navigation systems for four hours during a flight between the Indonesian capital Jakarta and Makassar on Sulawesi Island, forcing the pilot to make an emergency landing.
Last edited by Phil Space; 1st January 2007 at 16:41.