JAYAPURA, Indonesia (AP) — An Indonesian passenger plane that went missing two days ago was destroyed when it slammed into a mountain, killing all 54 people on board, the country's top rescue official said. 
 
 Relatives of passengers on the missing Trigana Air Service flight listen to a National Policies Disaster Victim Identification official at Sentani airport in Jayapura, Papua province, Indonesia, Monday,... (Associated Press) 
 
 Relatives of passengers on the missing Trigana Air Service flight sit at Sentani airport in Jayapura, Papua province, Indonesia, Monday, Aug. 17, 2015. Rescue officials spotted an Indonesian airliner... (Associated Press) 
 
 This photo released by the National Search and Rescue Agency (BASARNAS) of Indonesia Monday, Aug. 17,2015 shows the part of the wreckage that BASARNAS identified as of the missing Trigana Air Service... (Associated Press) 
 
 Members of the National Search and Rescue Agency (BASARNAS) wait before leaving on a search for the missing Trigana Air Service flight at Sentani airport in Jayapura, Papua province, Indonesia, Monday,... (Associated Press) 
 
 National Search And Rescue Agency (BASARNAS) chief F. Henry Bambang Soelistyo, left, looks at a map with Air Vice Marshal Sudipo Handoyo during a search operation for the missing Trigana Air Service flight... (Associated Press) 
 
 Relatives of passengers on the missing Trigana Air Service flight wait for information at Sentani airport in Jayapura, Papua province, Indonesia, Monday, Aug. 17, 2015. Rescuers are making their way into... (Associated Press) 
 
 In this photo released by China's Xinhua News Agency, soldiers prepare to leave for the crash site of an Indonesian passenger plane for rescue operations at an air base in Jayapura, Indonesia Tuesday,... (Associated Press) 
 
 In this photo taken Dec. 26, 2010, Trigana Air Service's ATR42-300 twin turboprop plane takes off at Supadio airport in Pontianak, West Kalimantan, Indonesia. The same type of a Trigana airliner carrying... (Associated Press) 
 
 This photo released by the National Search and Rescue Agency (BASARNAS) of Indonesia Monday, Aug. 17,2015 shows the part of the wreckage that BASARNAS identified as of the missing Trigana Air Service... (Associated Press) 
 
 More than 70 rescuers reached the crash site only on Tuesday after being hindered by rugged, forested terrain and bad weather. 
 
 The flight data recorder and the cockpit voice recorder, the plane's "black boxes," were found in good condition, said Henry Bambang Soelistyo, the National Search and Rescue Agency chief. The data they contain could help explain what caused the crash. 
 
 "The plane was totally destroyed and all the bodies were burned and difficult to identify," Soelistyo told The Associated Press. 
 
 He said all 54 bodies had been recovered and will be taken to Jayapura, the capital of Papua province, so they can be identified. 
 
 The Trigana Air Service plane was flying from Jayapura to the city of Oksibil with 49 passengers and five crew members on a scheduled 42-minute flight when it lost contact Sunday. 
 
 Soelistyo said the wreckage was at an altitude of 2,600 meters (about 8,500 feet). Much of Papua is covered with impenetrable jungles and mountains. Some planes that have crashed in the past have never been found. 
 
 The airline's crisis center official in Jayapura's Sentani airport, Budiono, said all the passengers were Indonesians, and included three local government officials and two members of the local parliament who were to attend a ceremony Monday in Oksibil marking the 70th anniversary of Indonesia's independence from Dutch colonial rule. 
 
 Oksibil, about 280 kilometers (175 miles) south of Jayapura, was experiencing heavy rain, strong winds and fog when the plane lost contact with the airport minutes before it was scheduled to land. 
 
 The victims' relatives, who had been waiting at the airport, broke down in tears when they heard the news. Many of them accused the airline of taking too long to give them information. 
 
 "They are unprofessional ... they play with our feelings of grieving," said Cory Gasper, whose brother Jhon Gasper was on the plane. 
 
 The airline released a public apology just after a search plane spotted the smoldering wreckage of the ATR42-300 twin turboprop on Monday. 
 
 It was unclear what caused the caused the crash, Indonesia's transportation safety commission has opened an investigation. 
 
 The passengers included four postal workers escorting four bags of cash totaling $468,750 in government aid for poor families to help offset a spike in fuel prices, Franciscus Haryono, the head of the post office in Jayapura, the provincial capital, told The Associated Press. 
 
 Indonesia has had a string of airline tragedies in recent years. In December, all 162 people aboard an AirAsia jet were killed when the plane plummeted into the Java Sea as it flew through stormy weather on its way from Surabaya, Indonesia's second-largest city, to Singapore. 
 
 The sprawling archipelago nation of 250 million people and some 17,000 islands is one of Asia's most rapidly expanding airline markets, but it is struggling to provide enough qualified pilots, mechanics, air traffic controllers and updated airport technology to ensure safety. 
 
 From 2007 to 2009, the European Union barred Indonesian airlines from flying to Europe because of safety concerns. 
 
 Trigana Air Service, which began operations in 1991, had 22 aircraft as of December 2013 and flies to 21 destinations in Indonesia. The carrier has had 19 serious incidents since 1992, resulting in the loss of eight aircraft and major damage to 11 others, according to the Aviation Safety Network's online database. 
 
 The airline remains banned from flying to Europe along with other six Indonesian airlines. 
 
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 Associated Press writers Niniek Karmini in Jakarta, Indonesia, contributed to this report. ||||| JAKARTA All 54 people on board a Trigana Air aircraft were killed in a crash two days ago in Indonesia's Papua province, the latest in a string of aviation disasters in the Southeast Asian archipelago, officials said on Tuesday. 
 
 Major-General Heronimus Guru, operations director at Indonesia's National Search and Rescue Agency, told a news conference in the capital the passengers' remains were being put into body bags but poor weather had hampered efforts to recover them by air. 
 
 Officials have declined to comment on the cause of Sunday's crash until the results of an investigation by the national transport safety committee are known, but Guru said the terrain in Indonesia's easternmost province may have been a factor. 
 
 "There's a possibility the aircraft hit a peak and then fell into a ravine because the place that it was found in is steep," he said. 
 
 The treacherous terrain of forest-covered ridges hampered rescuers' efforts to reach the site where the Trigana Air Service ATR 42-300 plane came down. 
 
 The aircraft's black box flight recorder, which should provide investigators with some answers, was found in the early afternoon. The device will be taken to Oksibil town tomorrow, depending on the weather, Guru said. 
 
 Television broadcast footage of rescuers in camouflage fatigues and surgical masks hacking through foliage and sifting through debris at the crash site as a helicopter hovered overhead. 
 
 There were 44 adult passengers, five children and infants and five crew on the short-haul flight from provincial capital Jayapura south to Oksibil. 
 
 The twin turboprop aircraft was also carrying about $470,000 as part of a village assistance program. 
 
 Poor infrastructure in the province means aid money is often flown in by air, said Abu Sofjan, spokesman for the national postal service, four of whose workers were among the passengers. 
 
 There was no suggestion the money was somehow linked to the crash. 
 
 Five members of the Bintang Highlands district parliament and government were also on board, online news service detik.com reported. Reuters was not able to verify the report. 
 
 All on board were Indonesian, officials have said. 
 
 Officials of Trigana, placed on a European Union list of banned carriers since 2007 over safety or regulatory concerns, were not immediately available for comment. 
 
 The aircraft made its first flight 27 years ago, online database Aviation Safety Network says. Trigana Air Service has a fleet of 14 aircraft, which are 26.6 years old on average, according to the airfleets.net database. 
 
 Trigana has had 14 serious incidents since it began operations in 1991, Aviation Safety Network says. Besides the latest crash, it has written off 10 aircraft. 
 
 Indonesia has a patchy aviation record, with two other major crashes in the past year. 
 
 In December, an AirAsia flight went down in the Java Sea, killing all 162 on board. More than 100 people died in June in the crash of a military transport plane. 
 
 Indonesia scored poorly on a 2014 safety audit by the U.N. aviation agency, largely because its Ministry of Transportation is understaffed, said two sources familiar with the matter, as the country struggles to cope with the rapid expansion of air travel. 
 
 (Additional reporting by Fergus Jensen; Writing by Nicholas Owen; Editing by Robert Birsel and Alan Raybould) ||||| Story highlights No distress call was received, officials say 
 
 The passenger plane lost contact with air traffic control on Sunday 
 
 Villagers reported seeing it crash into a mountain 
 
 Jakarta, Indonesia (CNN) Indonesian rescue workers have reached the crash site of a passenger plane that went down in a mountainous area with 54 people on board, a senior official said Tuesday. 
 
 The teams on the ground have so far seen at least 38 bodies at the scene and haven't found any survivors, said Bambang Soelistyo, the head of Indonesia's search and rescue agency. 
 
 Helicopters are being deployed to the densely forested area in the eastern Indonesian province of Papua to begin the evacuation process, he said. 
 
 The airliner, operated by the Indonesian carrier Trigana Air Service, lost contact with air traffic control Sunday about half an hour into a short flight from the provincial capital to a town in the mountains. 
 
 Search planes spotted debris on a mountainside Monday, but efforts to try to reach it on foot and by helicopter were suspended until Tuesday because of fog. 
 
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– Dozens of rescuers have made their way to the mountainous area where an Indonesian passenger plane crashed on Sunday, but they haven't found anybody to rescue. Officials say all 54 people on board—44 adult passengers, five children, and five crew members—were killed when the Trigana Air Service ATR 42-300 crashed in Papua province, Reuters reports. "The plane was totally destroyed and all the bodies were burned and difficult to identify," Indonesia's top search and rescue official tells the AP. He says all 54 bodies have been recovered, along with the plane's black boxes, which are in good condition. The turboprop plane crashed into the mountain around 30 minutes into a 42-minute flight without making a distress call, CNN reports. The cause of the crash hasn't been determined, though officials believe the rugged terrain may have played a role. "There's a possibility the aircraft hit a peak and then fell into a ravine because the place that it was found is steep," a search and rescue official tells Reuters, which notes that Trigana has a very patchy safety record, with 14 serious incidents since it started flying in 1991, including 10 in which the aircraft was destroyed. The plane was also carrying $468,750 in cash, which was to be distributed to poor families.