Tourist Plane Crashes Over Peru's Nazca Lines

At least 13 people are dead after a small tourist aircraft crashed in Peru's Nazca desert, among them foreign nationals who had boarded the flight to see one of the ancient world's most compelling mysteries from the air, according to local authorities cited by The Guardian.

The aircraft departed from the nearby city of Pisco before coming down into an open field — the kind of abrupt, definitive end that leaves investigators with wreckage and families with questions. Peru's Nazca Lines, the enormous geoglyphs etched into the desert plateau roughly 400 kilometres south of Lima, draw tens of thousands of visitors each year, almost all of whom experience them from light aircraft. The geography demands it: the figures — a hummingbird, a condor, a spider, lines that stretch for kilometres — are only legible from altitude. That same altitude is what makes the flights the only way to see them, and the risk the thing no tour operator puts in large print.

Small-aircraft tourism over remote terrain carries a different actuarial table than commercial aviation, and Peru's Nazca corridor has seen incidents before. The investigation into the cause of this crash is in early stages, with Peruvian authorities on site.

Thirteen confirmed dead. The nationalities of the foreign tourists have not yet been formally disclosed. Rescue and recovery operations were continuing as the full passenger manifest was being verified.