Rescue Resumes For Missing Peru Plane

Rescue teams struggled on foot through rugged mountains Friday searching for a missing Peruvian airliner with 46 people aboard as heavy fog and torrential rain kept reconnaissance helicopters from the skies.

TANS Airline flight 222 was three minutes from landing at the Chachapoyas airport when radio contact was lost with the plane at 8:43 a.m. Thursday. It was not raining when the plane disappeared but low-hanging clouds covered the mountains near Chachapoyas, meteorologists said.

The missing state-owned airliner carried four crew members and 42 passengers, including eight children — one of them a baby. TANS spokeswoman Carmen Mayorca said three foreigners were on the plane

Spaniard Isabel Perez and a Belgian husband and wife, Christophe Dubois and Sofia Porfirio.

The weather around Chachapoyas, the city near where the plane went down, was clear Friday morning as three rescue squads began a difficult trek into the jungle-covered mountains. But a heavy downpour began at mid-morning and continued into the afternoon.

Two reconnaissance helicopters managed to get into the sky briefly before bad weather forced them to return, air force Col. Juan Rodriguez said.

"Unfortunately, weather conditions make it impossible for us to go out in the search. We don't have even a mile of visibility at the airport. It's all rain," Rodriguez said. "Heavy fog is covering the mountaintops."

The 12-men ground search teams included specialists in jungle rescue, Rodriguez said.

Police Maj. Medardo Escobedo, chief of the rescue operations in Lamud, a town 10 miles northwest of Chachapoyas, said the foot patrols were trying to reach an area eight to 16 hours from Lamud where the plane may have crashed. He said the teams did not have radio equipment with which to communicate with the rescue base.

The land rescue teams were searching almost "blindly," Rodriguez said. The only information they had to guide themselves was from farmers who reported that they had seen a plane flying low or had heard a loud explosion, he said.

Chachapoyas, a city of 20,000 people, is some 400 miles north of Lima in a region of mountain ranges covered with thick vegetation.

The harsh terrain and weather of Peru's mountainous jungles often delay search efforts for lost planes. In 1987 it took rescuers 10 days to find a plane carrying 46 people that went down near the jungle town of Saposoa, 350 miles north of Lima.

TANS began offering weekly flights to Chachapoyas, which is close to the towering Kuelap ruins popular with tourists, in October. The city had been without regular air service for years.

The state-owned airline was set up 40 years ago to fly to remote jungle towns that private airlines did not service because the routes were not profitable.