Peruvian Plane with 42 Passengers Missing
Thu January 9, 2003 12:36 PM ET
LIMA, Peru (Reuters) - Air traffic controllers lost contact with a Tans Peru plane carrying 42 passengers plus four crew members on Thursday as it approached a small mountain airport in a northern Peruvian jungle area visited by tourists, the company said.
"The Fokker F-28 plane ... was declared in emergency at 8:43 a.m. (EST) near the Chachapoyas airport and ... from that point on, we lost contact with the plane and have not had more news," Jorge Belevan, head of the state airline's public relations, told RPP radio.
A community telephone operator in Luya, near Chachapoyas, told RPP radio that medical officials were heading to an area called Lonya Chico. "It appears that there are people wounded," she said.
Belevan said the plane had enough fuel to circle the airport and could have landed at another site, adding that weather conditions were "normal."
Lizandro Torres, another Tans spokesman, told Reuters that officials lost contact with the plane about five minutes before it was scheduled to land.
Belevan said a search was being mounted for the plane, which was traveling from the coastal city of Chiclayo to Chachapoyas, some 390 miles north of Lima. Chachapoyas is often visited by tourists traveling to Kuelap, a mountain citadel predating the Spanish conquest of the Americas.
According to a spokesman for the Chiclayo airport, the plane took off at 8:17 a.m. for the 30-minute flight. Tans Peru launched its twice-weekly Chiclayo-Chachapoyas route in November 2002, part of a plan to boost tourism in the mountainous jungle region and promote Kuelap.
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(CNN) -- Peru's air force was searching Thursday for a plane carrying 42 passengers and four crew members that radioed a distress call and then was lost from radar over Peru's Amazon jungle, a spokesman for TANS Airlines said.
TANS Flight 222 was three minutes from its scheduled landing at an airport in Chachapoyas, 400 miles north of the capital of Lima, when it called in an emergency at 8:43 a.m. EST, said TANS spokesman Jorge Belevan.
"They communicated with the control tower and said they would be landing momentarily," said Minister of Interior Gino Costa Santolalla. "A little bit later, they lost communication with the control tower, and then the plane disappeared from radar."
The air force and national police were coordinating the search for the Fokker F28 in the surrounding forest and mountains, which was focused near Lonya Chico, the minister said. A number of helicopters were deployed to the area.
The twin-engine plane had departed on the half-hour scheduled flight from the coastal city of Chiclayo, 410 miles northwest of Lima, Belevan said.
Back Aviation Solutions, which provides consulting and data information services to the aviation industry, said TANS has only one such plane in its fleet -- a 27-year-old model that has 65 seats.
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