Adam Air Debris Found in Pare-Pare Bay
Thursday, 11 January, 2007 | 14:08 WIB

TEMPO Interactive, Makassar: A piece of debris from the Boeing 737-400 plane belonging to Adam Air, which has been missing since January 1, has been found by a fisherman in around Pare-Pare bay, South Sulawesi.

“The man who found it was Bakri, yesterday evening,” said Edy Suyanto, the Coordinator of Search & Rescue team for Adam Air in Makassar, this morning (11/1).

According to Edy, the part of the plane was the tail stabilizer number 65C25746-76, which matched after being checked with the Adam Air records.

“However, what the cause of the missing plane was cannot yet be concluded,” said Edy, concurrently Indonesian Military (TNI) Hasanuddin Makassar Air Force Base Commander.

Bambang Karnoyudo, Head of National SAR Agency who was in Makassar this morning, said that the search is now being focused in the location around where the aircraft part was found.

“The tail stabilizer's position is at on right side of the plane,” he said.

Bambang said that the location was around eight kilometer south of Pare-Pare city, more or less 300 meters from the edge of the bay.

“At that time a fisherman named Bakri was netting fish and the plane part became lodged in his net,” he said.
According to him, Bakrie then handed in what he had found to the Pare-Pare Municipal Police HQ, then it was taken by an officer to Makassar.

“It arrived in Makassar at 3am,” said Bambang.

In addition to looking for the plane in Pare-Pare, now Indonesian Naval Vessel (KRI) Fatahillah, which is being helped by the United States' UNSR Mary Sears ship, is checked pieces of metal that have been detected at depths of 1,700 meters in the seas off the Mamuju Strait.

These pieces of metal are suspected to be part of the missing Adam Air plane that was traveling on the Surabaya-Manado route, carrying 96 passengers and six crew members.

Irmawati