Top Hollywood pilot working on Tom Cruise film killed in plane crash in Colombia

A small plane assigned to the crew of a movie starring Tom Cruise crashed in the Colombian Andes, killing two people, including a Los Angeles-based film pilot, and seriously injuring a third, the country’s civilian aviation authority said.

An official with the aviation agency said Cruise was not on the aircraft.

The official said an American, Alan Purwin, was killed along with the Colombian Carlos Berl. A third person aboard, Jimmy Lee Garland, a pilot from Georgia, was rushed to a hospital in Medellin, where he was in intensive care.

The official said the twin-engine plane ran into bad weather late on Friday after taking off from the colonial town of Santa Fe de Antioquia for a short flight to Medellin. No emergency was reported to air traffic controllers.

The Piper Aerostar-600, with tail number N164HH, appears to be the same aircraft that Cruise, a trained pilot, was photographed exiting the cockpit from upon his arrival in Medellin on August 20 to start work on his new film.

Called “Mena,” the film stars Cruise as American pilot Barry Seal, a drug runner recruited by the CIA to try to capture the late cocaine kingpin Pablo Escobar. Seal was shot and killed in 1986 in Baton Rouge, Louisiana, allegedly by assassins sent by Escobar’s Medellin cartel.