PIECES of a Myanmar military plane which went missing with more than 100 soldiers and family members aboard were found in the Andaman Sea late on Wednesday, a local official said. Navy ships and aircraft had been searching since the afternoon when the plane lost contact with air traffic controllers. More than a dozen children were believed to be among the passengers on the plane travelling from the southern city of Myeik to Yangon.

“Now they have found pieces of the damaged plane in the sea 218km away from Dawei city,” said Naing Lin Zaw, a tourism official in Myeik, adding the navy was still searching the sea. An air force source confirmed to AFP that a navy search and rescue ship had found pieces of the plane in the sea an hour’s flight south of Yangon, Myanmar’s commercial capital.

The commander-in-chief’s office said the plane lost contact at about 1:35pm (07:05 GMT) off Myanmar’s southern coast. There was conflicting information about the number of people on board. Giving an updated figure, the office said 106 passengers were on board — soldiers and family members — along with 14 crew. The air force source said more than a dozen of those on board were children. It is monsoon season in Myanmar but there were no reports of bad weather at the time the plane went missing.

The plane was a Y-8F-200 four-engine turboprop, a Chinese-made model still commonly used by Myanmar’s military for transporting cargo. The army said it was delivered in March last year and had logged 809 flying hours. The former military junta bought many of the aircraft from Myanmar’s giant neighbour during their 50 years of isolated rule, when they were squeezed by Western sanctions. A former executive at the aviation ministry said many of the aircraft in Myanmar’s fleet were old and decrepit. A surge in demand for air travel as Myanmar opens up has stretched the impoverished country’s aviation infrastructure, in particular in remote airports.

Published in Dawn, June 8th, 2017