Survivors of an Indonesian airplane crash at Jogyakarta on Java that killed 22 people said today that the plane was travelling too fast as it approached the runway.

The aircraft burst into flames as it landed, trapping passengers, including nine Australian foreign ministry officials and journalists, inside the burning wreckage.

Television footage showed black smoke billowing from the burning fuselage as bloodied passengers stumbled through a field away from the wreck.

The Boeing 737-400, belonging to the Indonesian national airline Garuda, was carrying 140 passengers from Jakarta, the capital, when it overshot the runway as it landed at Adi Sucipto airport.

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Anyone who has flown on Indonesia’s domestic airlines will experience a chill of awful recognition at the news of today’s crash

Richard Lloyd Parry, Asia Editor

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The plane, on its first 45-minute flight of the day, was full of fuel and exploded on impact.

It is the third serious aviation accident to happen in Indonesia in as many months.

Up to four Australians are missing, feared dead, including the diplomat Liz O'Neill and journalist Morgan Mellish, of the Australian Financial Review.

They were among a party of nine Australians accompanying their country’s Foreign Affairs Minister, Alexander Downer, on a visit to Indonesia, although he was not on board the plane.

After visiting the crash site, Mr Downer later told ABC television: "The two who are in best health told me that the plane came hurtling into the runway at a much greater speed than an airplane would normally land at.

"They themselves thought the plane would never stop in the length of the runway and it duly didn't - just ploughed across the end of the runway across a road, hit a bank and a culvert and went into a paddy field.

"When it hit the bank and the culvert it exploded."

Dien Syamsudin, a local Muslim leader who survived the crash, said: “Before the plane landed it was shaking. Suddenly there was smoke inside the fuselage, it hit the runway and then it landed in a rice field.

“I saw a foreigner. His clothes were on fire and I jumped from the emergency exit. Thank God I survived.”

Muhammad Dimyati, another survivor, said: “We overshot the runway, then I heard the sound of an explosion and ran through an emergency exit. I believe many remained trapped.”

Cynthia Banham, of the Sydney Morning Herald, survived with burns and back injuries and was in hospital in Yogyakarta last night. “From talking to Cynthia it was just clearly an absolutely horrific and traumatic experience,” her colleague, Mark Forbes, was reported as saying in the paper.

“I’ve spoken to her briefly, she was very distressed, she thought she was going to die, she talked about burning alive and people being burnt alive.”

Emergency crews battled for hours to extinguish the flames which engulfed the plane.

Indonesian and Australian forensic science officers were trying to identify more than 20 bodies removed from the burnt out wreckage of the plane.

“We should be prepared for bad news in relation to at least some of the Australians on board the aircraft. It is a terrible tragedy,” said John Howard, the Australian Prime Minister, in a televised news conference.

“I have not received any advice suggesting it was anything other than a tragic accident," he said.

A full investigation into the crash has been ordered by Susilo Bambang Yudhoyono, the Indonesian President, but early indications suggest that this was yet another accident to add to the country’s poor transport safety record.

In January an Adam Air plane, also a Boeing 737-400, disappeared with 102 passengers and crew on board and in December hundreds died when a ferry sank in the Java Sea.

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