Tourist plane crashes near Peru's Nazca Lines, killing 13

A Cessna Grand Caravan carrying thirteen people lifted off from Pisco on a Friday afternoon bound for one of the world's most famous archaeological sites. The flight was supposed to last long enough for the passengers to see the Nazca Lines—those vast, mysterious geoglyphs etched into the Peruvian desert centuries ago, visible only from the air. Twenty minutes later, the plane was wreckage scattered across a field near Pueblo Viejo, and everyone aboard was dead.

The aircraft departed at 1 p.m. local time and lost radio contact with the control tower within minutes. It crashed at 1:20 p.m., roughly four miles from the city of Nazca and about twelve kilometers from the archaeological site itself. Police Major Jorge Andrade arrived at the scene to find smoldering debris in the desert. "We have information that 11 passengers and two crew members have died," he told reporters. "Given the severity of the accident, there are no survivors. We have recovered four bodies so far."

The passengers were seven Italians, two Germans described as a couple, and two Spanish nationals. The pilot was Americo Salazar Cuellar; the copilot was Irenka Del Carpio. They were Peruvian, part of the infrastructure that keeps the Nazca Lines tourism industry running. Video footage showed firefighters and police moving through the wreckage, their figures small against the vast desert. Bodies lay on the sand. The cause of the crash remained unknown as authorities began their investigation.

This was not an isolated tragedy. The Nazca Lines, a UNESCO World Heritage Site, draws hundreds of thousands of tourists annually, many of them specifically to see the geoglyphs from the air. Multiple operators compete for this business, and the safety record has been troubling. In 2022, another small plane crashed near the site, killing seven people including two Chileans and three Dutch nationals. In October 2010, a plane operated by AirNasca went down after an overflight, killing four British tourists and two Peruvian crew members. Earlier that same year, a Cessna 206 crashed, taking three Chileans and four Peruvians with it. In April 2008, five French tourists died in another crash, though the pilot survived. This latest disaster marked the fifth major crash in sixteen years.

The municipality of Nazca issued a statement acknowledging the tragedy while deferring responsibility. "The investigation of the accident and the oversight of aviation operations are the responsibility of the competent authorities, who will determine the causes and assign liability in accordance with the law," the statement read. Peru's tourism ministry expressed its sorrow in similarly formal language. Neither statement addressed the pattern, or what might be done to break it. The Nazca Lines themselves—the hummingbird, the monkey, the whale, all those vast figures that have survived more than a thousand years—remained untouched, waiting for the next group of tourists willing to board a small plane and fly over them.