| Venezuelan airliner crashes into mountainside |
A Venezuelan passenger plane slammed into an Andean mountainside shortly after takeoff, killing all 46 people on board, officials said Friday.
Searchers spotted the shattered wreckage of the twin-engine plane in western Venezuela, and rescuers rappelled from helicopters down to the wreckage of the plane, operated by a domestic airline, Santa Barbara, in search of bodies, said Ramon Vina, head of the civilian aviation agency.
"This plane was found completely wrecked, smashed against the face of one of the mountains," said the national civil defense chief Antonio Rivero. "Unfortunately everyone aboard died."
The twin-engine plane crashed 10 km from the resort city of Mérida after taking off for the capital, Caracas, before dusk on Thursday. The French-made ATR 42-300, carrying 43 passengers and 3 crew members, was reported missing 30 minutes after takeoff. The flight was to have taken an hour and 45 minutes.
Once the plane took off, the control tower received no further communication from the pilot, said Jorge Álvarez, president of Santa Bárbara, a small airline with routes in Venezuela.
The authorities said they did not know the cause of the crash. The weather was normal for Mérida on Thursday, with some areas sunny and fog at higher elevations, said Luis Uzcátegui, an official of the Mérida fire department.
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