CAGAYAN, February 2: A Philippine DC-9 plane with 104 people abroad vanished today and an airport official said it appeared to have crashed into a volcano on Southern Mindanao island.Airline officials refused to acknowledge that the plane had crashed 10 hours after it had gone missing but mountaineers with a week's supply of food set off after dark at the 8,200-foot Mount Balatucan to look for Cebu Pacific Air flight 387. Philippine Air Force helicopters failed to see sign of the plane before bad weather forced them to halt their search.
``I think we are 80 per cent sure that that is the crash site,'' Artemio Garcia, chief air traffic controller at Cagayan De Oro airport, told Reuters. Garcia said residents of a village on a foothill of the volcano had reported hearing ``a very loud explosion'' near the mountains summit shortly before 11 am local time (8.30 am IST), or about the time the plane was last heard from.
Local officials in nearby Claveria town later reported seeing smoke coming from what theybelieved was the crash site and a local television station said the pilot of a commercial plane flying over the volcano reported seeing ``mangled bodies''. But the commander of the Air Force team said it had seen no signs of a crash. Search efforts will resume tomorrow.
Copyright © 1998 Indian Express Newspapers (Bombay) Ltd.
