Peruvian plane with 42 goes missing

Rescue teams searched a rugged area of Peru's Amazon jungle on Thursday night for a Tans Peru plane carrying 46 people that lost contact with air traffic controllers as it approached a small mountain airport.

The Fokker F-28 plane was declared in emergency at 8:43 a.m., minutes before it was to land in Chachapoyas, according to Jorge Belevan, spokesman for the state airline.

He told Reuters ground rescue teams would search through the night in an 18-mile radius of the airport.

"The weather is making the search and rescue more difficult," said Vice President Raul Diez Canseco, flanked by ministers at a news conference. "We regret this delicate situation and we hope to have news in the next few hours because we have up to now been unable to locate the plane."

Earlier, Tans said heavy rain had forced Peru's army and air force to call off air searches. January is part of the rainy season in Peru's jungle.

Belevan said authorities hoped the plane, built in 1975, was able to make an emergency landing near Chachapoyas.

Tans Flight 222 took off from the coastal city of Chiclayo at 8:17 a.m. for the 30-minute flight to Chachapoyas, which is 7,600 feet above sea level.

The plane was carrying 42 passengers, including seven children and one infant, and four crew members, Belevan said. Two foreigners were on it, Belevan said.

Chachapoyas, 390 miles north of the Peruvian capital, Lima, is often visited by tourists traveling to Kuelap, a mountain citadel predating the Spanish conquest of the Americas.

The government of President Alejandro Toledo has made Kuelap and the lush green Chachapoyas area -- home to scores of mysterious archeological sites -- the spearhead of a campaign to boost visitors to sites beyond Machu Picchu, the famed mountain city that is Peru's top tourist destination.

Tans Peru launched its twice-weekly Chiclayo-Chachapoyas route in November. Tans, which for years was an Air Force service linking Peru's jungle areas with the rest of the nation, began commercial flights in 1998 and now flies three planes on 11 routes.

Jorge Velasquez told Reuters at the Lima airport that his 26-year-old son was on the flight. "Now the only thing I can think about is our goodbye and my profound anxiety about whether he is OK," he said.

Peru's worst air crash was on Feb. 29, 1996, when a Boeing 737 belonging to the local Faucett Airline slammed into the Andes as it prepared to land in Arequipa, 600 miles south of Lima, on a flight from the capital. All 117 passengers and six crew members were killed.

Twelve people died in October 1988 when a Fokker-28 crashed after takeoff in southern Peru. Some 69 people survived.