Plane crash in Colombia kills 15, including politician
A Colombian lawmaker and a legislative candidate were on the twin-propeller plane that crashed in a mountainous region
A small plane crashed on Wednesday in a rural area of Norte de Santander province in northeast Colombia, killing all 15 people on board including a member of congress, authorities said.
Satena, the state-owned airline that operated the flight, said local officials in the community of Curasica notified authorities about where the plane had gone down and a rescue team was deployed to “assess the condition of the passengers.”
Colombia’s Transportation Ministry later released a statement saying that “once the aircraft was located on site, authorities regrettably confirmed that there were no survivors”.
The aircraft, a Beechcraft 1900 twin-propeller plane with registration number HK4709, took off at 11.42am local time from the airport in Cucuta, the department’s capital. It was bound for Ocana, a municipality surrounded by mountains, on a flight that typically lasts about 40 minutes.
The aircraft’s final contact with air traffic control came minutes after take-off, according to a statement released by Satena.