Rescuers scour Venezuelan Andes for missing plane

CARACAS (Reuters) - Trekking through cold and ruggedterrain, search teams scoured the Venezuelan Andes on Fridayfor a passenger plane thought to have crashed with 46passengers on board in the mountain region.

Authorities still have not found the twin-engined planeoperated by local airline Santa Barbara that vanished soonafter taking off on Thursday afternoon, television stationGlobovision said, citing national civil defence chief AntonioRivero.

It was headed from the high-altitude city of Merida to thecapital Caracas roughly 300 miles (500 km) away.

Mountain villagers reported hearing a huge noise theythought could be a crash soon after the disappearance of flight518, local civil defence official Gerardo Rojas said.

Venezuela's civil aviation authority said the plane wascarrying 43 passengers and three crew members. The passengerlist included a well-known Venezuelan political analyst andrelatives of a senior government official, authorities said.

Rescue teams in the craggy mountain region where the planewas thought to have come down hiked on foot at night in an areawhere temperatures drop below freezing after dark.

The first search parties travelled toward the Paramo Mifafivalley, a chilly area in a region of some snow-capped peaks ofup to 13,000 feet (4,000 meters) that is home to condors andhiking routes that make it popular with backpacker tourists.

Weather conditions and visibility were described as optimumat the time of take-off by one air rescue official. He said thedifficult terrain meant helicopters would not be used in thesearch until first light.

Family members who had waited for their loved ones toarrive in Caracas received help from state psychologists todeal with anxiety.

The head of Santa Barbara, a small Venezuelan airline thatcovers domestic routes and has seven Merida flights a day, saidthe roughly 20-year-old plane was well maintained and had norecord of technical problems.

The pilot had worked with the airline for eight years andreceived special training for flying in the Andes, SantaBarbara President Jorge Alvarez told television stationGlobovision.

"I have to believe the pilot was certainly both competentand well-suited" for the flight, he said.

Early editions of most Venezuelan newspapers splashed newsof the missing plane on their front pages, with some reportingvillagers saying they saw the aircraft crash.

The plane was an ATR 42-300, a turboprop aircraft built byFrench-Italian company ATR.

The ATR 42 series has been involved in at least 17accidents since first flying in 1984, according to the AviationSafety Network, a private air safety monitoring agency.

Thursday's was the second major incident involving aVenezuelan flight this year after a plane carrying 14 people,including eight Italians and one Swiss passenger, crashed intothe sea close to a group of Venezuelan islands in January.

(Additional reporting by Saul Hudson, Ana Isabel Martinezand Enrique Andres Pretel; Editing by Eric Beech)