JAYAPURA: A plane with 48 people aboard skidded off the runway in Indonesia’s remote eastern region of Papua on Monday, police said, injuring several passengers.
The Southeast Asian archipelago has a poor aviation safety record, and Papua is covered in mountainous terrain where flying is hampered by frequent poor weather.
The ATR-42 aircraft belonging to Trigana Air was taking off from an airport in the remote Yapen Islands regency to Papuan capital Jayapura on Monday morning when it skidded off the runway.
The flight was carrying 42 passengers, including a baby, and six crew.
“Praise God everybody survived and has been taken to a hospital for a health checkup,” local police chief Ardyan Ukie Hercahyo said in a statement.
“We are investigating the incident and coordinating with related parties to ensure this will never happen again.”
The local search and rescue agency said in a statement that some passengers were injured and traumatized by the incident.
Indonesia relies heavily on air transport to connect its thousands of islands, but Papua is a particularly difficult area to reach.
In 2015, a Trigana Air plane crashed there, killing all 54 people on board.

WASHINGTON: Passage of a six-month temporary spending bill would have widespread and devastating effects on the Defense Department, Pentagon chief Lloyd Austin said in a letter to key members of Congress on Sunday.
Austin said that passing a continuing resolution that caps spending at 2024 levels, rather than taking action on the proposed 2025 budget will hurt thousands of defense programs, and damage military recruiting just as it is beginning to recover after the COVID-19 pandemic.
“Asking the department to compete with (China), let alone manage conflicts in Europe and the Middle East, while under a lengthy CR, ties our hands behind our back while expecting us to be agile and to accelerate progress,” said Austin in the letter to leaders of the House and Senate appropriations committees.
Republican House Speaker Mike Johnson has teed up a vote this week on a bill that would keep the federal government funded for six more months. The measure aims to garner support from his more conservative GOP members by also requiring states to obtain proof of citizenship, such as a birth certificate or passport, when registering a person to vote.
Congress needs to approve a stop-gap spending bill before the end of the budget year on Sept. 30 to avoid a government shutdown just a few weeks before voters go to the polls and elect the next president.
Austin said the stop-gap measure would cut defense spending by more than $6 billion compared to the 2025 spending proposal. And it would take money from key new priorities while overfunding programs that no longer need it.
Under a continuing resolution, new projects or programs can’t be started. Austin said that passing the temporary bill would stall more than $4.3 billion in research and development projects and delay 135 new military housing and construction projects totaling nearly $10 billion.
It also would slow progress on a number of key nuclear, ship-building, high-tech drone and other weapons programs. Many of those projects are in an array of congressional districts, and could also have an impact on local residents and jobs.
Since the bill would not fund legally required pay raises for troops and civilians, the department would have to find other cuts to offset them. Those cuts could halt enlistment bonuses, delay training for National Guard and Reserve forces, limit flying hours and other training for active-duty troops and impede the replacement of weapons and other equipment that has been pulled from Pentagon stocks and sent to Ukraine.
Going forward with the continuing resolution, said Austin, will “subject service members and their families to unnecessary stress, empower our adversaries, misalign billions of dollars, damage our readiness, and impede our ability to react to emergent events.”
Noting that there have been 48 continuing resolutions during 14 of the last 15 fiscal years — for a total of nearly 1,800 days — Austin said Congress must break the pattern of inaction because the US military can’t compete with China “with our hands tied behind our back every fiscal year.”
Johnson’s bill is not expected to get support in the Democratic-controlled Senate, if it even makes it that far. But Congress will have to pass some type of temporary measure by Sept. 30 in order to avoid a shutdown.