Rescuers on Saturday reached a remote jungle site on Indonesia's Sumatra island where an airplane crashed two days earlier, officials said, amid hopes of survivors among the 18 people on board.
After two days of efforts, when winds, clouds and rain forced helicopters back several times and ground teams struggled with "impossible" terrain, an eight-strong search and rescue party was finally able to fly to the location.
Four of them were lowered to the crash site but the fate of the four crew and 14 passengers, who include four children, remained unclear as radio communication with personnel on the ground was lost.
The plane was caught by the forest canopy as it crashed, leaving it lying on the jungle floor with the ends of its wings torn off and its cockpit badly damaged, but the cabin section largely intact.
Hopes of finding survivors were given a boost on Friday when the mother of one of the passengers said her daughter had phoned her, and a door on the aircraft had visibly been opened since Thursday.
"Today we hope the personnel on the ground can prepare an emergency helipad so we can rescue the victims as soon as possible," director of operations at the national search-and-rescue agency Sunarbowo Sandi said.
The Nusantara Buana Air Casa 212 turboprop plane went down Thursday morning after departing Medan, in North Sumatra, for the nearby province of Aceh.
But the aircraft sent a distress signal soon afterwards and crashed at 1,100 metres (3,600 feet) in the mountainous Bohorok area, about 70 kilometres (40 miles) northwest of Medan.
Around 30 relatives of the victims gathered at a field in Bohorok on Saturday morning and prayed together for the safe return of their loved ones.
"We pray that you give the rescue team the power to bring our families home safely," said one member leading the prayer.
Severe weather, including strong winds and heavy rain, has hampered rescue efforts.
Three teams drove toward the site Thursday night and set out across rough terrain on an hours-long journey by foot. But by Saturday, all three teams had given up trying to hack through the jungle to reach the remote site by land.
"It will be impossible to get there by foot," national search-and-rescue agency head Laksamana Daryatmo told El Shinta Radio.
"We've had to turn helicopters around a number of times. We have faced strong winds that come in and out unexpectedly. There has been heavy rain and clouds."
The vast Indonesian archipelago relies heavily on air transport and has a poor aviation safety record.
The incident is Indonesia's fourth serious air crash in the past month.
A helicopter chartered by US giant Newmont Mining crashed last Sunday in central Indonesia, killing two people on board.
Earlier in September, an Australian and a Slovak pilot were killed when their small Cessna Grand Caravan aircraft, which was carrying fuel and food to a remote area in Papua province, went down.
Another small aircraft, which was also transporting supplies to remote villages for a Christian organisation in Papua, crashed last week, killing its American pilot and two passengers.
