Plane crash in Argentina kills 22
5/19/2011BUENOS AIRES — A hospital director says there are no survivors in the wreckage of commercial plane carrying 22 over Argentina’s Patagonia.
Ismael Ali says rescuers have seen the bodies of all the people aboard the Sol Air Lines that went down Wednesday while en route from Neuquen near the Andes to Comodoro Rivadavia along the coast of Patagonia.
The air carrier had reported the plane carrying 19 passengers and three crew missing after it communicated an emergency.
Mayor Mabel Yahuar of the town of Los Menucos in Rio Negro province says there had been reports of an explosion in the sky, but they have no information on the fate of those on board.
"We have sent fire fighters and ambulances to the spot," she told Argentine channel C5N.
SOL Flight 5428 was about halfway through its last leg of a domestic run from Cordoba to Mendoza to Neuquen to Comodoro Rivadavia when it declared an emergency at 8:50 p.m. local time, 42 minutes after take off. At that point the plane was over a relatively flat and remote area of the Patagonian desert.
The air line says it then notified all the proper Argentine authorities.