Treacherous terrain hampers rescue efforts for crashed Indonesian airliner.

OKSIBIL – More than 265 search and rescue personnel have been deployed to a remote area of Indonesia’s Papuan provinces where debris, thought to be from a missing plane, has been spotted.

An aerial search team spotted debris in the Bintang Mountains region after a Trigana Air flight went missing on Sunday with 54 people on board.

Heronimus Guru, the deputy director of operations at the national search and rescue agency Basarnas, presented photos taken from the search plane showing a scar gouged into a mountainside with what appears to be scattered debris.

He did not confirm that it was definitely the crash site but the photo was taken in the mountainous area of Papua, near Oksibil, where the plane lost contact.

Guru said a team of 20 rescuers were trekking to the area to identify any debris and build a helipad for recovery operations to begin.

The Trigani Air flight disappeared just minutes before it was due to land in Oksibil, the capital of a mountainous region not far from the border with Papua New Guinea.

The plane was carrying 49 passengers and five crew. Locals reported seeing the plane fly into a mountain on Sunday afternoon. There was no immediate word on whether anyone survived.

The plane lost contact with air traffic controllers about 10 minutes short of its destination.

Searchers struggled with rugged, forested terrain Monday, trying to reach the site overland but they gave up when bad weather made it impossible to proceed and planned to try again Tuesday.

Officials deployed two ground teams to the site, which is at an altitude of 2600 meters but suspended efforts to get there because of thick fog.

Search officials are borrowing a helicopter from Freeport-McMoRan, a mining company, that can use hoists and long lines to lower members of the emergency response team to the scene. But officials said the bad weather also prevented the chopper from flying to the site Monday.

The plane lost contact with air traffic control on Sunday. There was no indication that a distress call was made from the plane, Indonesian Transportation Ministry spokesman J.A. Barata told CNN Indonesia.

There are many possible reasons for the apparent lack of a distress call, CNN aviation analyst Mary Schiavo said. It could indicate that crew members were too busy dealing with whatever situation arose to send one, or that they didn’t realize they were in trouble, she said.

Villagers reported seeing a plane crash into a mountain, according to Indonesian aviation authorities.

The site is about 14 kilometres from the airport where the plane was supposed to land.

The plane was carrying 44 adult passengers, five children and five crew members when it went missing just over half an hour into a short domestic flight between Jayapura, the provincial capital of Papua, and Oksibil, an inland town near the border with Papua New Guinea.

All those on board were Indonesian, authorities said.

The search teams face tough challenges in the dense jungles of Papua’s sparsely populated highlands.

Weather patterns are unpredictable in the region and Papua has few roads connecting cities, towns and remote tribal villages. To get where they want to go, people either have to take a plane or a boat – or walk, which can sometimes take months.

A big part of Trigana Air’s business is ferrying people and cargo between different parts of Papua.

There are now reports that it had A$500,000 on board.

AFP Indonesia news editor Sam Reeves, said the money, in four bags, was being transported by postal officials for distribution to poor families.

“In Papua, that’s actually relatively common,” he said.

“Because so many communities are remote and can only be accessed by plane, from time to time money will be spent on small aircraft like this, kind of government funds to be distributed.

“That, apparently, has all disappeared so that will be a huge blow to families there as well, who were expecting that.”

Before Sunday’s crash, the airline had been involved in 19 serious safety incidents since 1992. Eight of the incidents resulted in the loss of the aircraft, and the 11 others involved major damage.

Trigana is one of a large number of airlines banned from operating in European airspace “because they are found to be unsafe or they are not sufficiently overseen by their authorities”.

It has been on the list since 2007.