Indonesian Plane Crash Highlights Heinous Weekend In International Air Travel

UPDATE, 5:18 p.m. EDT: The mid-air collission between two airliners has resulted in the deaths of at least three people, California authorities said, according to Los Angeles' KTLA-TV. The twin-engine Sabreliner and single-engine Cessna 172 ran into each other about two miles northeast of the Brown Field airport at about 11 a.m., the news station reported citing information from the Federal Aviation Administration.

San Diego's KSWB-TV reported that at least four people were killed in the crash.

UPDATE, 3:45 p.m. EDT: Another incident occurred later Sunday, when the FAA announced there had been a mid-air collison between a twin-engine Sabreliner and a single-engine Cessna 172. Local media outlets circulated pictures from the scene near Otay Mesa, California, where emergency crews rushed to the crash in the late morning, local time:

Original post:

It's been a difficult weekend in the world of air travel: A large airplane with 54 people aboard crashed in Indonesia and several small single-engine aircraft were reported down across the U.S.

Indonesia's director general of air transportation, Suprasetyo, announced at a news conference Sunday that villagers witnessed a Trigana Air Service plane crash into a mountain and that wreckage was found in the Oktabe district of Papua province, according to CNN. The plane was carrying five crew members and 49 passengers, including five children. All are reportedly Indonesians.

While the exact cause of the crash is under investigation, the aircraft was flying in bad weather conditions. Its crew did not make a final distress call, a possible indication that the crash happened too quickly for its members to contact air traffic control.

Based in Jakarta, Indonesia, Trigana has had 14 serious incidents (including the one this Sunday) since it took wing in 1991, according to the Aviation Safety Network. It has been on the list of airlines banned within the European Union since 2007 because of concerns about safety issues.

Meanwhile, one person was killed and another was hospitalized with injuries after a Hawker Beechcraft BE35 crashed onto Long Island Rail Road tracks in New York state Sunday morning, Reuters reported. The pilot of the aircraft radioed he was having engine trouble shortly before the plane crashed at about 7:48 a.m. EDT in Hicksville, about 31 miles east of the Manhattan borough of New York.

Pilots were killed in unrelated crashes in New Jersey and Virginia when their single-engine planes crashed into wooded areas. Both flights failed to reach their final destinations because of unanticipated enginge trouble, local media outlets reported.

Although no fatalities were involved, hundreds of flights were delayed or canceled Saturday when the air traffic control system that routes planes over Washington malfunctioned. For reasons still under investigation by the Federal Aviation Administration, the system simply stopped working. Service was restored by Saturday evening, though not before thousands of airline customers were delayed in arriving at their destination by as much as 24 hours in some cases.

“The FAA is working with the airlines to resume normal air traffic operations after an automation problem yesterday led to delays and cancellations at airports in the Washington, D.C. area. Preliminary information from yesterday indicates 492 related delays and 476 cancellations,” the FAA said in a statement posted online Sunday. “The FAA is continuing to diagnose the cause of yesterday's problem, and has not seen a reoccurrence of the original issues.”