Posted by Chinenye on Fri 17th Apr, 2026 - tori.ng
A private Airbus H130 helicopter operated by Matthew Air Nusantara crashed in the dense forests of West Kalimantan, Indonesia, on April 16, 2026, killing all eight men on board.
(Rescue Agency. Photo by KSAT)
A private Airbus H130 helicopter operated by Matthew Air Nusantara crashed in the dense forests of West Kalimantan, Indonesia, on April 16, 2026, killing all eight men on board. The transport ministry reported on Friday that a private helicopter crashed in dense forest on the Indonesian island of Borneo, killing two crew members and six passengers.
About five minutes after taking off in the West Kalimantan province on Thursday morning, the local company Matthew Air Nusantara's Airbus helicopter lost communication with air traffic control.
All eight on board were men and one was a Malaysian national, civil aviation director general Lukman F. Laisa said in a statement.
He said, “The joint search and rescue team had successfully located the crash site of the aircraft and, based on information from the field, all passengers and crew members have been confirmed dead.”
Search and rescue agency head I Made Junetra told AFP on Friday that rescuers discovered the crash victims Thursday night in a steeply sloping, dense woodland area. The bodies were being flown to the provincial capital of Pontianak, Made added.
The thousands of islands that make up the large Southeast Asian archipelago of Indonesia are largely connected via air travel.
With multiple catastrophic aviation incidents in recent years, the nation has a dismal aviation safety record. In January, a fisheries ministry-chartered turboprop jet crashed into a mountain on the island of Sulawesi, killing all ten occupants.
In September last year, a helicopter carrying six passengers and two crew members crashed in South Kalimantan province, killing all on board.
Less than two weeks later, another chopper crashed in the isolated Papua area of Ilaga, killing four people.