By Enrique Andres Pretel
BARINAS, Venezuela (Reuters) - A Venezuelan passenger planeslammed into a steep Andean mountainside shortly after takeofffrom a nearby tourist city and all 46 people on board werekilled, rescue officials said on Friday.
Search teams spotted the wreckage from a helicopter flyingover high-altitude mountains. Helicopter pilot Jhonny Paz saidthe plan was "pulverized" and there were no survivors.
"There is minimal chance of any survivors," said GerardoRojas, a regional civil defence chief. "The plane is just toodestroyed and it is in such a tough area."
The twin-engine plane crashed just a few miles (kilometres)from the mountain tourist city of Merida, notoriously difficultfor pilots to navigate around, after taking off for the capitalCaracas on Thursday evening.
Recovery of the bodies and wreckage would be difficultbecause there were no obvious areas for aircraft to land nearbyin the rugged terrain.
"The zone is completely inaccessible," said Ivan Altuve, asearch team coordinator working from the city of Barinas inwestern Venezuela.
Search teams had trekked overnight through rugged terrainand at daylight on Friday aircraft scoured the Andes.
There was no evidence the pilot made distress calls to airtraffic controllers before it crashed about 13,000 feet (4,000meters) above sea level, officials said.
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.
The passenger list included a well-known Venezuelanpolitical analyst and relatives of a senior governmentofficial. There were no immediate reports of foreigners aboardthe plane operated by local airline Santa Barbara.
TOUGH FLIGHT CONDITIONS
Pilots need special training to fly from Merida's airportbecause the city is so tightly hemmed in by mountains thatplanes must make steep ascents at takeoff.
Visibility at dusk becomes so difficult planes are onlyallowed to take off during daylight. The plane involved inThursday's incident was the day's last flight out.
Still, weather conditions and visibility were described asoptimum at the time of takeoff by one air rescue official.
Family members who had waited for the passengers to arrivein Caracas received help from psychologists to deal withanxiety. They were set to fly on Friday to the area of thecrash.
Santa Barbara is a small Venezuelan airline that coversdomestic routes and has seven Merida flights a day.
Its president, Jorge Alvarez, said the roughly 20-year-oldplane was well-maintained and had no record of technicalproblems, and that the pilot had worked with the airline foreight years.
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 air accident in Venezuelathis year after a plane carrying 14 people, including eightItalians and one Swiss passenger, crashed into the sea close toa group of Venezuelan islands in January.
(Additional reporting by Brian Ellsworth, Ana IsabelMartinez and Enrique Andres Pretel; Writing by Saul Hudson;Editing by Kieran Murray)
