Airliner with 46 aboard missing in Andes

An airliner with 46 people aboard went missing and probably crashed in a remote mountainous region soon after taking off Thursday from the Andean city of Merida, authorities said.

Mountain villagers reported hearing a loud noise that they thought could have been a crash after the twin-engine plane took off for this capital city, roughly 300 miles away, Civil Defense official Gerardo Rojas said.

“We have information of a possible finding,” said National Civil Defense chief Antonio Rivero, though he added that the plane was still officially listed as missing.

“We do not know what condition the passengers are in,” he said.

“We are going to wait for the teams to reach the area to confirm if the plane is effectively in the zone and in what conditions it was found,” said Noel Marquez, director of Venezuela’s emergency management agency in Merida.

The plane, operated by local airline Santa Barbara, was an ATR 42-300, a turboprop built by the French-Italian company ATR.

This was the second serious incident involving a passenger plane in Venezuela this year.

An aircraft carrying 14 people, including eight Italians and one Swiss passenger, crashed into the sea close to a group of Venezuelan islands in January. There were no survivors.