Weather hits jungle search for airliner

Three foot patrols were hacking there way through Peru’s mountain jungle today in the hunt for an airliner carrying 46 people that disappeared minutes before landing.

The skies around Chachapoyas, the town near where the Fokker airliner went down on Thursday, were clear at dawn, but within an hour clouds formed and dropped low over the mountains.

Two of four available search helicopters managed get into the sky briefly before being forced to return by rain and heavy fog.

Police Major Medardo Escobedo, chief of the rescue operations, said the foot patrols were trying to reach an area eight to 16 hours away. He said the teams were without radio equipment for communicating with the rescue base.

TANS Airline Flight 222 was three minutes from landing at Chachapoyas airport when radio contact was lost with the plane.

Chachapoyas, a town of 18,000 people, is located in mountains 400 miles north of Lima.

The passengers included eight children – one of them a baby. TANS spokeswoman Carmen Mayorca said three foreigners were on the plane: a Spanish woman and a Belgian couple.

The harsh terrain, thick vegetation and heavy rain 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 outside of the jungle town of Saposoa, 350 miles north of Lima.