A team of U.S. aviation experts is in Indonesia to help investigate a missing Indonesian passenger jet that vanished from radar screens Monday during rough weather.
Six people from the U.S. National Transportation Safety Board will work with Indonesian transport officials to try to find out where the Adam Air Boeing 737 went down. The jetliner carried a crew of six along with 96 passengers. It dropped off radar screens as it was heading for Manado, on the northeast tip of Sulawesi island, from Surabaya, on central Java Island.
No mayday signal was sent.
Rescue teams initially concentrated their search in areas of western Sulawesi, based on the plane's last known position. A huge air, sea and land operation has since extended to the northern and eastern areas of Sulawesi.
The search has been difficult for rescuers because there have been no transmissions from the plane's emergency locator.
So far, nothing has been found.
Indonesia's president has ordered that the search continue.
Transportation officials blame bad weather for the apparent crash.
On Tuesday, senior Indonesian officials said the plane's wreckage and 12 survivors had been found. They later retracted that statement.
Adam Air is a privately owned, low-cost airline flying mainly domestic routes in Indonesia.
Some information for this report was provided by AP and Reuters.
