LIMA, Peru, Jan. 11 -- After two days of rain and fog, rescue helicopters today spotted the wreckage of a Peruvian airliner that plowed into a mountain with 46 people aboard, including eight children. Officials said there was little hope of finding survivors and that the recovery effort would be slow.
Pieces of the TANS airliner were scattered over an area 1,300 feet wide and about 1,600 feet below the peak of the mountain, Transportation Minister Javier Reategui said.
"Regrettably, there has been a direct impact against Coloque mountain," he said. "The possibilities of anyone being alive are remote."
The 11,550-foot mountain -- part of the Andes mountain range -- is 10 miles northwest of the town of Chachapoyas and about 400 miles north of Lima.
Search crews were on the ground near the site of the plane crash but were having trouble reaching it. They have to get around cliffs and push through knee-deep mud, said Juan Rodriguez, an air force colonel who is in charge of rescue operations.
Heavy rains and low clouds hampered efforts to locate the missing plane, a Fokker 28 twin-engine turbojet, which lost radio contact with the Chachapoyas airport minutes before it was scheduled to land Thursday morning. The flight had originated in Lima.
It was not raining when the plane disappeared, but low-hanging clouds covered the mountains near Chachapoyas, meteorologists said, leading to speculation that poor visibility contributed to the crash.
But medical technician Walter Abad and the mayor of Chachapoyas, Enrique Torres, were quoted by the Lima daily El Comercio as saying they had spoken with villagers near the impact site who reported seeing the plane flying low with one of its engines aflame shortly before they heard an explosion.
David Reina, fire chief of the Amazonas region, said a team of firefighters who climbed the mountain late Friday found a path the plane had cut through trees before it smashed into the mountain.
Relatives of passengers wept after officials confirmed that rescue teams had found the wreckage. Police preparing for their mission laid out dark plastic body bags near a helicopter on a grassy clearing in Lamud, a town near Chachapoyas in which the rescue operation was centered.
The plane was carrying four crew members and 42 passengers.
If in fact one engine was on fire prior to the crash, perhaps it wasn't CFIT after all.