A plane carrying 16 people went missing in a mountainous area of Indonesia's restive Papua province on Sunday, officials said.

The Merpati Airlines plane carrying 13 passengers and three crew was flying from Jayapura to Oksibil town when it lost contact with air traffic control, transport safety chief Herry Bhakti Singayuda told AFP.

"We're still trying to locate it," he said.

District mountain transport head Dumaroni suggested that weather may have been a factor, adding that everyone on board the plane was Indonesian.

"To get to Oksibil, the plane has to pass mountains and the weather is always changing... it can just turn cloudy anytime," he told AFP.

Singayuda said the plane went missing around 40 minutes after it left Jayapura at 4.30 (GMT), while Dumaroni said the plane lost contact much earlier, at 1.28 GMT.

"It left Sentani airport (in Jayapura) at 10:15 am and was supposed to arrive at Oksibil at 11:05 am but lost contact at 10:28 am. Until now, it hasn't arrived in Oksibil," he said.

Indonesia, which relies heavily on air links across the archipelago, has one of Asia's worst air safety records.

The European Union banned all Indonesian-registered aircraft from flying over its airspace in June 2007, acting on a report from the International Civil Aviation Organisation, which criticised the country's safety standards.

The European Commission last month had taken Garuda Airlines and three other Indonesian carriers off its aviation blacklist after air transport authorities addressed safety concerns.