"Canadian registered" 212 missing in Colombia.

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This story was just released a short time ago. Doesn't carry much detail at the moment. Anybody have any more information? I haven't found any reference in the Colombian press. Hopes and prayers with the families and colleagues of this crew.

Colombian rescuers search for chopper carrying Canadians and Frenchman
Sat Apr 27, 2:50 PM ET

BOGOTA, Colombia - Rescuers on Saturday were searching for a helicopter that disappeared in Colombia carrying two Canadians and a Frenchman, authorities said.

The Bell 212 aircraft was last heard from on April 19 after stopping at the airport in Cali, Colombia's third-largest city. It disappeared over a mountainous region in southern Colombia, said Armando Rivera, a spokesman for the country's civil aviation.

The Canadian-registered helicopter, which was flying from Panama to Ecuador, was reported missing last week. However, the report wasn't made public until Friday.

The identities of the passengers weren't known.

Officials at the Canadian and French embassies in Bogota, the capital, were not available for comment on Saturday because their offices were closed.

Rescue workers have been searching for wreckage in the jungles of Cauca and Narino provinces, but have found nothing. The zone is filled with rebel and rival paramilitary gunmen fighting in Colombia's long-running civil conflict.

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The following link was posted on the Canadian Aviation website. It is a direct babelfish translation of the cyberpress.ca story. Hopes are with the crew, families and colleagues.

Colombia: disappearance of a pilot montréalais
Gilles Paquin
The Press

The pilot montréalais Gilles Prégent and his/her two travelling companions are disappeared last week in the Colombian jungle whereas they went to deliver a helicopter in Bolivia, learned the Press .

"The three men had left Calgary and moved towards Santa Cruz, to Bolivia. They made to stopover with Cali, in Colombia, and were not re-examined since they left this city on April 19 ", confirmed Friday Rod Brown of the firm Resource Helicopter, the employer of Mr. Prégent.

According to Mr. Brown, the contact with the apparatus was lost half an hour after its departure of Cali. Taking account of the speed of the helicopter and its operating range, all indicates that it disappeared in the jungle, estimates Mr. Brown.

"I hope that they were captured by the guerrilla who controls this area, it is the least worse of the scenarios, otherwise it is that they had an accident", said Mr. Brown.

The apparatus, Bell 212, is equipped with a communication system and of two satellite telephones, which enables him to keep the contact with the air authorities even in the event of technical problems, explains Mr. Brown.

"Of course, if they are held by the guerrilla we will end up intending some to speak, because it will claim a ransom. On the other hand, if the helicopter were crushed or taken fire, it will have to be waited until research gives results ", adds Mr. Brown.

The woman of Mr. Prégent, Carmen Gloria Torres, declared with the Press which her husband had telephoned to him before taking off of the airport of Cali for him to say that all was well.

Publicité

"It is a pilot who has 27 years of experiment and 12 000 hours of flight. It worked in South America, in Africa, in Asia and in Europe ", M me Torres underlined.

A door word of the Ministry for Foreign Affairs in Ottawa, Patrick Riel, confirmed Friday the disappearance of the apparatus but refused to reveal the names of the passengers. It indicated that the embassy from Canada in Bogota had been informed of its disappearance by the consulate of France on April 22.

According to Mr. Riel, Ottawa required of the Colombian Red Cross and the local police force to carry out research on the ground, but that is very dangerous because of the strong presence of the guerrilla. It is thus not known if the operations will be able to proceed normally.

The travelling companions of Gilles Prégent were the mechanic Jay Ridell, 26 years, of Calgary and Pierre Galipon, a French national representing of the firm Heli America, of Santa Cruz in Bolivia.

The Bolivian company had bought the helicopter of a company of Calgary and Mr. Galipon had come to take delivery of it. Resource Helicopter had required of Mr. Prégent to control it as far as Bolivia.

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At least they are alive - so there's something to work with here.
Hoping for a rapid and happy conclusion to this. Thoughts with the crew and all family members and colleagues.

Colombian military says guerrillas kidnapped two Canadians and Frenchman
07:17 PM EDT May 04

BOGOTA (AP) - Colombia's armed forces chief said Thursday a helicopter that vanished with two Canadians and a Frenchman aboard two weeks ago had made an emergency landing and that rebels kidnapped those aboard.

Gen. Fernando Tapias, commander of Colombia's armed forces, said intelligence sources and intercepted communications from the Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia, or FARC, that showed the rebels had kidnapped the occupants of the Bell 212 chopper which disappeared on April 19 after refuelling in Cali, Colombia's third largest city.

Those aboard - Gilles Pregent, a pilot from Montreal; Jay Riddell, a mechanic from Vancouver; and Pierre Galipon, a Frenchman who is a partner in the company that owns the chopper, Heliamerica - had been flying the aircraft from Canada to Peru.

Tapias did not specify where the helicopter was forced to land, saying only it was somewhere in the mountains of southern Colombia's Cauca or Narino states. The FARC has a heavy presence in that area. Civil aviation officials said the last radio contact with the helicopter was near the town of Mercaderes, some 320 kilometres southwest of Bogota, in Cauca state.

A Heliamerica official reached late Thursday said no one had contacted the company demanding a ransom. The official, who asked not to be named, was surprised that Tapias would announce the apparent kidnapping without anyone from the Colombian government contacting the company first.

"How strange that he would say this to journalists before contacting us," the official said.

Heliamerica purchased the aircraft - the civilian version of the famed Huey helicopter - in Calgary, Canada, and was bringing it to Peru. With offices in Santa Cruz, Bolivia, and Lima, Peru, the company provides helicopter services to oil companies, officials said.

Authorities believe the FARC has stolen two other helicopters this year, as well as several small planes.

Colombia has the highest kidnapping rate in the world, with more than 3,000 people taken hostage last year.

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Wait agonizing for family

Uncertainty 'unbearable' for Montreal kin of pilot kidnapped in Colombia

SARAH STAPLES
Montreal Gazette

Monday, May 06, 2002

The last time Carmen Prégent spoke to her husband, Gilles, the veteran helicopter pilot phoned from Cali, Colombia, to say he had finished refueling for the last leg of a trek from Calgary to Peru - and that all was well.

It was April 19, a Friday afternoon, she distinctly recalls.

Days later, External Affairs officials delivered a more sobering message: the helicopter was missing, and her Montrealer husband had been kidnapped by Colombian rebels.

Carmen Prégent admits she has barely slept since.

"He phoned just before getting back on board to say that everything was going great," she recalled in a phone interview yesterday from her home in Île Bizard. "And then we lost completely track of him. We have no idea how the negotiations are going, we don't even have a motive yet (for the kidnapping). I just pray and pray he'll come home, safe - what else can I do?"

Until Thursday, External Affairs officials were officially treating the aircraft's disappearance as a potentially weather-related accident.

They are now confirming that Prégent, 50, along with mechanic Jay Riddell, 27, from Vancouver, and French-born Pierre Galipon, are probably in the hands of the Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia, or FARC - extortionists and kidnappers credited with stealing two other helicopters and several small planes this year alone.

The information comes from Fernando Tapias, commander of the Colombian Armed Forces, who has said operatives intercepted communications between FARC militants suggesting the Canadians and Frenchman were taken hostage.

Galipon and his father co-own Heliamerica SA, a Bolivian company that bought the 30-year-old Bell 212 for $1.8-million from a Canadian bank. The company then hired Prégent and Riddell to fly it to Lima, Peru.

Armand Mullie, a helicopter mechanic with Eagle Copters Ltd., in Calgary, where the men stayed for a week before their flight, said Galipon told him over beers he had a contract with a major oil company to service an oil field, and that the heavy-duty helicopter - known in the business as a "flying truck" - was needed for routine flights over the jungle.

"He got the contract and then started looking for the helicopter - that's how it's done," the mechanic said.

Normally, helicopters are dismantled, shipped, then reassembled, in order to avoid flying over rebel-controlled territory.

But Galipon told him it had taken time to find, buy and prepare the bird, and the job's start date was only days away.

Mullie, who has known Prégent for 31 years, said the men knew they could be kidnapped over the mountains of Colombia, and had meticulously planned the 50-hour, 7,865-kilometre trip to try to minimize the risk.

"They knew the game," he said. "We've all come close to being captured."

Mullie, 54, said fickle weather, especially near the country's high mountain peaks, prompts pilots to stick close to the ground and fly in valleys, where they become vulnerable to anti-

aircraft fire from above and below.

He said Prégent, a career pilot with 27 years' and 12,000 hours' flying experience, told him he had narrowly missed being captured about two years ago, while he was on a similar mission to ferry an A-Star model helicopter from Canada to a client in South America.

The two friends spoke a week before Prégent left, on April 17, for his latest assignment.

Two days later, civil aviation officials lost radio contact with the crew near Mercaderes, a town about 320 kilometres southwest of Bogota.

Marie-Christine Lilkoff, a spokesman for Foreign Affairs, said Canada has formally requested the Colombian government's help in tracking down the hostages and securing their safe release. Canadians are also working with Heliamerica to locate the men.

But that is cold comfort to Carmen Prégent, who, five years ago, gave up a job at a bank and left her extended family in Chile to marry Prégent and move, with her son and daughter, to Canada.

Now, with her relatives so far away they are unable to provide comfort, she says, her voice beginning to tremble.

And she's also gone from being financially independent to worrying about how she will feed her family: she speaks only a little English and French, so for five years her husband has been the family's only wage-earner.

"It's a terrible situation - the worst that can happen to a family," she said in Spanish. "Your imagination is running wild, and you feel completely incapacitated. And then there are the financial pressures that seem crass to think about in a moment like this, but by necessity, you can't help it."

Prégent wasn't from a wealthy family, she said; he simply worked as hard and saved as much as he could to afford the private flying lessons that let him, in the end, fulfill his boyhood dream.

His two teenage girls from a previous marriage and elderly parents, who live an hour's drive north of Montreal, are taking things badly, she said. "The uncertainty for them is unbearable."