Tourist plane crashes in southern Peru, killing 13

What happened

A small tourist plane crashed on Saturday near Peru’s Nazca Lines, killing all 13 people on board. The aircraft, a Cessna Grand Caravan (also referred to as a Cessna C-208) operated by the Peruvian sightseeing company Aerodiana, had taken off from an airport in Pisco, in the Ica region, at around 1pm local time (7pm BST) for a scenic overflight of the famous geoglyphs. According to police, the plane lost contact with the control tower minutes after departure and went down around 1:20pm in Pueblo Viejo, roughly 4 miles (6km) from the city of Nazca and about 12km from the Nazca Lines site itself.

Police Major Jorge Andrade, speaking from the crash site, said “there are no survivors” given the severity of the impact, and that four bodies had been recovered at the time he spoke to reporters. Local media reported the wreckage quickly caught fire, which prevented any rescue attempts. Video from the scene showed firefighters and police working amid smoldering wreckage in the desert, with smoke rising from the aircraft.

Who was on board

The 11 passengers were seven Italian citizens, aged 18 to 54; two Spaniards, both 52; and two Germans, aged 77 and 78, described as believed to be a couple. The pilot was named as Americo Salazar (Salazar Cuellar in one report) and the copilot as Irenka Guanilo del Carpio (also given as Irenka Del Carpio).

The response so far

The cause of the crash has not been determined, and Peruvian authorities have opened an investigation. The municipality of Nazca said the investigation and oversight of aviation operations fall to the “competent authorities,” who will determine causes and assign liability under the law. Peru’s tourism ministry issued a statement expressing sorrow over the deaths of the tourists and crew. Aerodiana said it would review its flight schedule in line with directives from relevant authorities. One report noted a Peruvian official — named as President Keiko Fujimori — said a temporary suspension of the airport was under consideration pending findings from relevant ministries, though this detail did not appear across all accounts.

Why overflights of the Nazca Lines keep happening

The Nazca Lines are a UNESCO World Heritage site in southern Peru: a series of massive geoglyphs — depicting animals such as hummingbirds, monkeys and whales, along with plants, imaginary beings and geometric figures — etched into the desert floor by the Nazca culture roughly 1,600 years ago, dated to between AD 200 and 700. UNESCO calls them “among archaeology’s greatest enigmas” given their scale, and believes they may have had ritual astronomical purposes. Because the drawings span kilometers, they can only be fully appreciated from the air, which is why competing tour operators fly small planes low over the site for visitors. Peru drew more than 4.1 million tourists in 2025, and sites like the Nazca Lines and Machu Picchu are among its biggest draws.

This is not the first fatal crash at the site. In 2022, a small plane crash there killed seven people, reported by outlets as including Chilean and Dutch nationals. In 2010, a crash killed six, including four British tourists and two Peruvian crew, while a separate crash earlier that year killed three Chileans and four Peruvians. In 2008, five French tourists died in another crash, though the pilot survived that incident. The Guardian noted this history reflects longstanding concerns about the safety and maintenance of aircraft used by competing sightseeing operators at Nazca.

How the coverage compares

All the outlets covering this story rely on the same core police account from Major Jorge Andrade and agree on the basic toll and circumstances. Differences are mostly in level of detail and framing: The Guardian and BBC give the fullest historical rundown of past Nazca crashes, listing specific nationalities and years going back to 2008. Al Jazeera’s report is more focused on the tourism-economy angle, citing Peru’s 4.1 million annual visitor figure and quoting UNESCO’s description of the site, and is alone in mentioning a possible airport suspension attributed to a Peruvian president. Sky News and Al Jazeera’s video piece carried no accompanying article text, offering only the top-line death toll. Precise spellings of the pilots’ names vary slightly between BBC/Guardian and Al Jazeera’s reporting.

What remains unknown

None of the sources yet identify a cause for the crash. Investigators have not said whether mechanical failure, weather, pilot error or another factor is suspected. It is also unclear from the coverage whether any broader grounding of Aerodiana’s fleet or other Nazca-area operators will follow, beyond the airline’s statement that it would review its schedule and the reported consideration of a temporary airport suspension.

Sources

• Al Jazeera
• BBC World
• The Guardian World
• Al Jazeera (2)
• Sky News World

Featured photo: Diego Delso via Wikimedia Commons (CC BY-SA 4.0)