Indonesian authorities on Thursday called in psychics to help find a missing commercial jetliner after massive sea, land and air searches found no trace of the plane for a third straight day.
Adam Air flight KI-574 was carrying 96 passengers, including three US citizens, and a crew of six when it disappeared on Monday afternoon in bad weather over the eastern Indonesian island of Sulawesi.
The National Search and Rescue Agency again suspended the search at nightfall Thursday and will resume at daybreak Friday.
"It's stopped for today. We're going to resume the search tomorrow morning," Ahmad, a rescue official, told Deutsche Presse-Agentur dpa by telephone from the agency's operations headquarters in Makassar, the capital of South Sulawesi province.
"We are compiling information from local sources, including the opinions of physics, to locate the missing plane," he said, adding that thus far, crash site locations provided by the psychics had proved false.
Indonesia has a long history of mysticism, and psychics and paranormal experts are revered in parts of the country.
Rescue officials are increasingly frantic about finding the plane, which senior officials had erroneously reported was spotted along with 12 survivors on Tuesday morning. The false reports delayed expanding the search into the Makassar Strait by at least one day and enraged grieving relatives of the passengers.
Military and civilian rescue teams have been hampered by inclement weather and are not equipped to search at night.
"Until this stage, we have received no reports of any trace being found," Samuel, another rescue agency official in Makassar told dpa. "There is still no word on the missing airliner."
A Singapore Air Forces Fokker-50, which holds sophisticated equipment including infrared sights, joined in search operations Thursday morning after the Jakarta government requested international assistance.
They and two Indonesian military aircraft spent several hours combing the Makassar Strait off the west coast of Sulawesi Island.
Although search efforts also continued on land, officials increasingly believe the budget carrier jetliner crashed into the ocean.
"The last contact between the plane's pilot and air traffic control at Makassar airport has indicated the plane was flying above the sea," First Air Marshal Eddy Suyanto, commander of Makassar's air force base, was quoted as saying by Media Indonesia newspaper.
On land, rescue teams of 2,000 police and soldiers, joined by local volunteers, were continuing to search in Mamuju, Majene and Polewali Mandar districts in West Sulawesi province, as well as Tana Toraja in South Sulawesi, where the aircraft was last detected on radar.
"We combed through Majene and Mamuju coastal areas, but we still were unable to find any trace," Neno, co-pilot of an Indonesian Air Force Cassa plane, told the Jakarta-based Elshinta radio station after landing at Makassar Air Force Base to refuel.
In addition to the three spotter aircraft, "three Navy vessels are involved in the operation today," Idin Arifin, another rescue official, said.
Unlike the two previous days, the skies over Sulawesi Island were clearer on Thursday and provided better visibility, he said.
Officials had previously said the jetliner disappeared after issuing a distress signal while flying in bad weather over Sulawesi Island, but the claims were denied Thursday by rescue workers in Makassar who had spoken with air traffic controllers at the city's airport.
Government officials on Tuesday were forced to retract earlier statements that a crash site had been located in a remote, mountainous region near the town of Polewali Mandar, about 1,600 kilometres north-east of Jakarta, and that 12 people had survived while 90 bodies had been accounted for.
President Susilo Bambang Yudhoyono has ordered an investigation into the condition of all commercial planes in Indonesia, as well as an evaluation of the nation's transportation system.
The Boeing 737-400 jetliner was on a scheduled flight from East Java capital, Surabaya, to Manado, the capital of North Sulawesi province, when it disappeared.
(Original headline: Indonesia Brings In Psychics To Help Find Missing Jetliner )
