Police in Peru said a Peru plane crash near the Nazca Lines killed all 13 people on board after a tourist flight left Pisco on Saturday. The Cessna Grand Caravan lost contact with the control tower minutes after takeoff and went down in Pueblo Viejo, ending a sightseeing trip that never reached the overflight route.
Police Major Jorge Andrade said at the crash site: "We have information that 11 passengers and two crew members have died". Andrade also said: "Given the severity of the accident, there are no survivors. We have recovered four bodies so far".
Pueblo Viejo crash site
The plane came down in Pueblo Viejo, about 4 miles from Nazca and roughly 12km from the Nazca Lines site. Local authorities in Nazca said the dead included seven Italians, two Germans and two Spanish people, along with the pilot, Americo Salazar Cuellar, and the copilot, Irenka Del Carpio. Their names turned a tourist overflight into a recovery operation that now has to account for every person on board.
Police in Peru reported that the crash happened at 1.20pm, after the aircraft departed Pisco at about 1pm local time. For the families of the 11 tourists and two pilots, that short gap is all that separates a routine flight from a fatal descent.
Unesco site under scrutiny
The Nazca Lines draw hundreds of thousands of tourists every year and are a Unesco world heritage site, with several operators competing to offer overflights. The crash reopened a hard question around aircraft safety and maintenance on these routes, because the same attraction that sells the flight also concentrates repeated risk into a narrow window of takeoff, transit and landing.
The municipality of Nazca said the investigation of the accident and the oversight of aviation operations are the responsibility of the competent authorities. Peru’s tourism ministry expressed deep sorrow over the deaths of tourists and crew members, while the cause of the crash remained unknown when the report was filed.
Previous Nazca Lines crashes
The Nazca Lines have seen deadly overflights before. In April 2008, five French tourists were killed in another crash and the pilot survived. Earlier in 2010, three Chileans and four Peruvians died when a Cessna 206 crashed, and in October 2010, four British tourists and two Peruvian crew members were killed when a small plane operated by AirNasca crashed after flying over the Nazca Lines.
In 2022, a small plane crash killed seven people, including two Chileans and three Dutch nationals. Those earlier accidents give investigators a sharper pattern to examine now: repeated fatal crashes on the same tourist corridor, with the latest case leaving no survivors and four bodies recovered so far.
What caused the Cessna Grand Caravan to crash minutes after leaving Pisco is the question that now drives the investigation, and the answer will decide whether this was a mechanical failure, a handling error or something else entirely.
