MANILA - A military helicopter has sighted the wreckage of a small plane that went missing on Saturday morning in Albay province, south-east of Manila, a government spokesman said on Sunday.
Mr Tim Florece, the information officer of Camalig town, told a local radio interview that the military helicopter saw the tail of the aircraft less than 2km from the crater of Mount Mayon, a 2,460m cone-shaped volcano located in Albay province approximately 300km south-east of Manila on the island of Luzon.
The Cessna 340A aircraft went down three minutes after take-off for Manila from the Bicol International Airport in Daraga town on Saturday. Four people were on board – the pilot, a crew member and two Australian passengers.
In a statement, Camalig town mayor Caloy Baldo confirmed the information, saying “that the wreckage of the Cessna 340A was eventually found more than 32 hours since its disappearance”.
However, he said that the pilot, crew member and two passengers are “yet to be found”.
“The search and rescue operations continue,” he added.
“The authorities are presently investigating the crash site to map out factors that led to the incident,” he said.
The volcano is under alert level 2, meaning that an eruption, rockfalls or landslides can occur anytime. Under alert level 2, no people are allowed inside the 6km danger zone from the volcano. Aircraft are not allowed to fly close to the volcano.
Mr Baldo said that the rescue team is coordinating with the Philippine Institute of Volcanology and Seismology to ensure the team’s safety during the retrieval operation.
“The problem is the weather is bad and it hampers the visibility of the ground search,” Civil Aviation Authority of the Philippines spokesman Eric Apolonio told AFP.
An aerial search to locate the missing people will continue on Monday.
“We are not discounting the possibility that they could still be alive,” Albay disaster officer Cedric Daep said.
The Cessna crash in Albay was the second accident in nearly a month.
On the afternoon of Jan 24, a Cessna plane carrying six people, including the pilot and five passengers, went missing after taking off in Isabela province in the northern Philippines. The aircraft remains missing. XINHUA
