On Tuesday, Indonesian rescue workers trekked through foggy mountain forests, reachng the crash site of a passenger plane that went missing over the weekend.
According to the Associated Press, an Indonesian official confirmed that rescuers have indeed reached the Trigana plane crash site and that the aircraft was found "totally destroyed."
A grisly scene welcomed the rescuers, as bodies and debris were found scattered on the forest trees.
The national news service Antara said Tuesday morning that at least 38 bodies were found among the wreckage of the Trigana plane crash, according to NBC News.
The plane has crashed, it is completely destroyed," Bambang Soelistyo, head of BASARNAS, Indonesia's search and rescue agency, told the Agence France-Presse.
Soelistyo added that the search crew arrived exactly 9:30 a.m. Tuesday (8:30 p.m. Monday ET) at the Trigana plane crash site in Papua province.
According to Heronimus Guru, deputy director of operations for Indonesia's national search and rescue agency, no one from the 54 people on board the Trigana Air Service flight survived the crash. Helicopters have been deployed to the remote eastern Indonesian province of Papua in order for the evacuation process to begin.
The Trigana Air Service flight lost contact with air traffic control on Sunday half an hour into its flight from Papua's provincial capital to a small town located in the mountains. No distress call was found made from the Trigana ATR 42-300 turboprop aircraft before loss of communication, said J.A. Barata, spokesman for Indonesia's Transportation Ministry, as told to CNN Indonesia.
Search and rescue operations on foot which was supposed to have occurred Monday was suspended to Tuesday because of bad weather. According to CNN, apart from the Trigana plane crash's wreckage and passenger bodies, search crews also found data recorders or the so-called black box, which could provide answers to the incident.
According to Indonesian aviation authorities, villagers saw the plane crashing into a mountain. The Trigana plane crash site is located about 14 kilometers from the region's airport, where it was supposed to land.
The Trigana aircraft had been carrying 44 adult passengers, five children and five crew members when it was reported missing while on a flight to the Jayapura provincial capital. Every person on board is Indonesian, according to authorities.
Trigana Air's business mostly involves the transportation of people and cargo between different parts of Papua.
Apparently, even before the Trigana plane crash on Sunday, the airline has been one of the airlines banned from operating in European airspace. The European Commission said the airline has been on the list since 2007 "because they are found to be unsafe and/or they are not sufficiently overseen by their authorities."
According to Flightglobal, a website tracking the global aviation industry, since 1992, Trigana Air Service has had 19 serious safety incidents, eight of which resulted in aircraft loss. Meanwhile, 11 of the incidents had major aircraft damage.