Search teams in western Colombia have located the wreckage of a small aircraft that vanished over the mountainous Chocó region, but the discovery has only deepened the mystery: the plane was found empty, with no sign of its five occupants.
Colombia’s Air Force confirmed that rescuers reached the crash site of the Cessna T206, registration HK4985, after an overnight search through dense, hard-to-reach terrain near Tatamá National Natural Park. General Luis Miguel Díaz, commander of the Air Force’s Fifth Combat Air Command, said crews were stunned to find the fuselage intact but abandoned, with no trace of the pilot or passengers nearby.
The aircraft had been flying from Colombia’s San Juan subregion to Bogotá, carrying four female doctors—Perla Constanza Álvarez, Sandy García, María Guzmán, and Yuliza Figueredo—along with veteran Turkish pilot Mehmet Cankaya. The medical team had just completed a volunteer mission providing free health care to underserved communities in Chocó, one of Colombia’s poorest and most isolated departments.
The plane lost radar contact amid thick vegetation and rough terrain, and poor weather initially hampered search efforts. A fresh team of rescuers and Air Force personnel is now taking over the operation, searching by air and land to determine whether survivors walked to safety or were helped by local residents. Families are holding on to hope that the crew managed an emergency landing and escaped before losing contact.
For more details, read the full story at El Tiempo.
Source: Unidades de rescate llegaron al sitio donde está la avioneta siniestrada en el Chocó, pero está vacía (eltiempo.com). English version produced with AI assistance.
Image: Rob Young, BY 2.0 (via Openverse).