The sightseeing flight carrying 11 foreign tourists and two crew members crashed on Saturday, Aug. 1

NEED TO KNOW

• Thirteen people died in Peru after a plane carrying tourists crashed over the Nazca Lines
• The sightseeing flight carrying 11 foreign tourists and two crew members crashed on Saturday, Aug. 1
• The Nazca Lines were scratched on the surface of Peru’s desert between 500 B.C. and A.D. 500, and the area has been designated as a World Heritage Site

Thirteen people died in Peru after a plane carrying tourists crashed over an archaeological site.

Government officials in the province of Nazca said the sightseeing flight carrying 11 foreign tourists and two crew members crashed on Saturday, Aug. 1, while flying over the Nazca Lines, a group of extensive geoglyphs that form the shapes of animals and were etched into the desert around Nazca hundreds of years ago, Reuters, the Associated Press and The Guardian reported.

The country’s Ministry of Transport and Communications said in a statement shared on Facebook that the plane, a Cessna Caravan C-208 aircraft operated by the Peruvian company Aerodiana, took off from the nearby city of Ica at ​around 12:10 p.m. local time.

By 1 p.m., the flight crew reported an emergency situation ​to the control tower at Nazca airport. Radio contact was lost soon after, the agency said.

After crashing, the plane caught fire, and firefighters and municipal police officers were dispatched to the scene, where they found no survivors.

State news agency Agencia Andina reported that two German, two Spanish and seven Italian tourists were on the plane, per Reuters.

The Ministry of Transport said that Peru’s Aviation Accident Investigation Commission, as well as other agencies, would be conducting an investigation into the crash.

“The Ministry of Transport and Communications deeply regrets the plane crash that occurred in the district of Vista Alegre, province of Nazca, and extends its heartfelt condolences and solidarity to the families and loved ones of the deceased passengers and crew,” the ministry wrote in Spanish. “Given the sensitivity of the moment, our priority is absolute respect for the victims and their families.”

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Peru’s Ministry of Foreign Trade and Tourism also wrote in a statement that it “expresses its deepest condolences for the tragic deaths of the tourists and crew members aboard the aircraft that crashed.”

The Nazca Lines are located in the desert along the Andean mountain range near the coast. They were scratched on the ground between 500 B.C. and A.D. 500, and the area has been designated as a World Heritage Site by the United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization (UNESCO).

“The geoglyphs depict living creatures, stylized plants and imaginary beings, as well as geometric figures several kilometers long,” UNESCO states about the site, which is often viewed by plane or nearby towers. “They are believed to have had ritual astronomical functions.”

Saturday’s plane crash is not the first deadly incident that has taken place at the World Heritage Site.

In 2022, a small plane crash killed seven people, including two Chileans and three Dutch nationals, according to The Guardian.

Additionally, in October 2010, four British tourists and two Peruvian crew members died in a small plane crash, the BBC reported at the time. That same year, three Chileans and four Peruvians died in a separate crash. Five French tourists were also killed in another crash in April 2008, but the pilot survived, per The Guardian.

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