Nearly 24 hours after a small single-engine cargo and transport plane crashed near Guyana’s western border with Brazil, specialized search and rescue units continued to comb the dense, mountainous jungle terrain on Saturday for the plane’s only occupant, its pilot.
The 13-seat Cessna Caravan, operated by local aviation firm Air Services, was declared missing late Friday after it failed to touch down at its scheduled destination, Imbaimadai, a remote gold-mining region in southwestern Guyana. According to Guyana’s Civil Aviation Authority, the pilot was the sole person on board when the aircraft encountered severe torrential rainfall that preceded its crash into a mountainside.
The wreckage of the downed plane was first spotted on Friday by other aircraft operating in the sparsely populated region, marking the end of the initial search phase to locate the crash site. The site sits deep within thick jungle in Guyana’s Region Eight, close to the Brazilian border, and military teams tasked with reaching the wreck had to navigate arduous terrain, cutting a path through dense 30-meter-tall forest canopy and descending steep slopes to reach the area. That detail was confirmed in an official statement released by the Guyana Defence Force.
Small aircraft like this Cessna Caravan are a critical backbone of transportation across Guyana, a South American country with large swathes of undeveloped, roadless interior rainforest. Dozens of small planes connect remote mining, logging and indigenous communities scattered across the country’s interior, and also operate regular regional routes to neighboring countries including Brazil, Suriname and Caribbean island nations. As of Saturday afternoon, there was no update on whether the pilot has been found or what their condition is, and search efforts are ongoing.