AN Indonesian airliner carrying 54 people went missing yesterday in bad weather over a mountainous region of Papua province.

The Trigana Air Service flight was flying from Indonesian Papua’s provincial capital Jayapura to the nearby city of Oksibil when air traffic control lost contact with it.

There was no indication that the pilot had made a distress call.

Oksibil was experiencing heavy rain, strong winds and fog when the plane stopped communicating with air traffic controllors, minutes before it was scheduled to land.

The ATR42-300 twin turboprop plane was carrying 49 passengers and five crew members on the scheduled 42-minute journey.

Residents of Okbape village in the Bintang district of Papua told local police that they had seen an aircraft crash into a mountain.

Some 150 rescuers are heading to the remote area and will begin searching there this morning.

Aerial searches for the missing plane were called off yesterday evening, to be resumed today.