Missing helicopter with 8 Koreans located in southern Peru

The Peruvian Air Force has identified the location of a helicopter that went missing Wednesday that had 14 passengers, including eight Koreans. A search operation mobilizing choppers in the area was suspended, however, due to bad weather.

Kim Wan-jung, minister at the Korean Embassy in Lima, said Thursday, “The Peruvian Air Force has identified the map coordinates of signals transmitted by the global positioning system believed to be installed on the missing chopper,” adding, “The location is a site between Mazuko, the place of departure, and Cusco, the destination of the helicopter.”

“After starting to trace the signal around 11 a.m. Thursday, the air force identified the accurate coordinates of the location around 4 p.m., or about 23 hours after the helicopter went missing.”

The helicopter was traced to a place called Wayra Wayra, located about 60 kilometers from Cusco, a city full of Inca relics in the South American country’s southern region. The site is in a highland forest area standing 4,725 meters above sea level.

Peruvian police mobilized a chopper and searched the area around 2:50 p.m. Thursday, but pulled it out several hours later due to thick clouds over the site in question and sleety weather.

Conducting search operations on land, police are reportedly having difficulty accessing the site due to snowfall on the mountain. Weather authorities forecast that the weather in the mountainous area where the helicopter went missing would clear up Friday morning local time, and intensive search operations reportedly resumed from then.

The eight Koreans on the helicopter included staff from Korean companies including Samsung C&T as well as a foreign employee and the pilot. They were on an inspection tour of a candidate site for a hydraulic power plant in Mazuko on Wednesday morning, and went missing after the craft lost communication with the control tower an hour after departing from the site around 4:30 p.m. for Cusco.

Peruvian authorities said they attempted to communicate with the mobile phones of the missing people, but failed to reach them. In the area, signals that are automatically sent when a helicopter crashes have not been traced, leading to speculation that the craft made an emergency landing.

The problem is that the passengers in the mountainous area lack food amid cold weather and must be rescued as soon as possible. They are expected to survive just two days without help.

The missing helicopter was confirmed to be an S-58ET also known as a Sikorsky, which can accommodate 14 to 15 people. The old model has been operated for 37 years since first produced in 1975. The chopper had a new engine installed in 1990 and had been accident-free. Heli Cuzco, which had been operating the craft, is a small-size helicopter tour agency set up in the 1990s with offices in Cusco and other places in southern Peru.

A Korean Embassy source in Peru said, “Considering that the chopper has had no accidents, it is believed to have crashed or had an emergency landing due to bad weather rather than mechanical failure.”

zsh75@donga.com