Thursday 17 October 2013

Mexico finds missing plane; all 14 aboard dead


Mexican military and civilian personnel on Wednesday reached the site on the Baja California peninsula where a small plane carrying 14 people crashed, and confirmed all aboard died.

A photo from the crash site showed the shattered, partly burned wreckage of the plane on a steep mountainside.

The site was so precarious that soldiers had to use special mountaineering equipment to reach the wreckage, said Baja California Sur state's interior secretary, Armando Martinez Vega.

Federal transportation Secretary Gerardo Ruiz Esparza wrote in his Twitter account that the single-engine propeller plane carried a pilot and 13 passengers.

Martinez Vega said the bodies of those aboard had been found, but the task of transporting them to the nearest morgue would be difficult.

The plane was operated by a small local carrier. All those aboard are believed to have been Mexican citizens. It took off from the Baja beach town of Loreto amid bad weather caused by Tropical Storm Octave on Monday and disappeared shortly afterward.

The wreckage of the airplane was spotted by a helicopter Wednesday in the Sierra de la Giganta mountain range just west of the Loreto airport, where it took off Monday morning, the secretariat said in a statement.

A search-and-rescue mission was launched Monday, two hours after the plane took off, the statement added.

The airplane was carrying 13 passengers - mostly members of the same family, including two minors - and the pilot.

The aircraft, property of the private company Aeroservicio Guerrero, went missing 25 minutes after taking off from Loreto on a flight to Ciudad Constitucion, apparently due to bad weather.

The plane was authorised to fly despite adverse weather conditions in Baja California Sur state caused by Tropical Storm Octave.

The cause of the crash was under investigation.

Thursday 17 October 2013

http://www.thestate.com/2013/10/16/3042749/mexico-finds-missing-plane-all.html

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