‘Jet Falls After Fuel Runs Out’

OVER 100 air passengers and crew were believed killed yesterday as a plane fell out of the sky – and it was feared to have run out of fuel at 35,000 feet.

The last message heard from the Adam Air budget airline Boeing 737-400 was a distress signal sent while over the Indonensian island of Sulawesi, once known as Celebes.

An air traffic controller said the jet, with six crew and 96 passengers – 11 of them children – then vanished off his screen.

The controller, named as Bhabr, told Jakartra TV, the plane had hit “very bad” weather and “may have run out of fuel” as pilots used full throttle to try to escape the storms.

Indonesian transport minister Hatta Radjasa said the last call was an SOS. The plane left Surabaya in East Java at 1pm – 6am UK – on a twohour flight to Manado, in the north of Sulawesi.

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