A domestic passenger plane carrying 46 people was ”practically pulverised” when it crashed into Venezuela’s western Andes Mountains overnight and the chances of finding survivors was nil, officials said on Friday.
”The plane was practically pulverised and [crashed] head-on,” a fire-services officer, Sergeant Jodi Paz, told Globovision television after flying over the crash site in a rescue helicopter.
An official at the national civil aeronautical institute, General Ramon Vina, said: ”By the type of impact we presume that there are no survivors.”
Witnesses saw the crash, a civil defence official in Merida said.
The commercial aircraft, run by the Santa Barbara Airlines, went down on a flight from the main Andean city of Merida to the capital Caracas, about 500km distant.
The company, founded in Maraciabo in 1995, had no record of accidents prior to the crash.
It serves both domestic and international routes, flying to Madrid, Miami, Aruba and Tenerife. — AFP
