William Ralston | Atavist Magazine |January 2024 | 1,513 words (6 minutes)
This is an excerpt from the issue. 147, “Mayday”.”
1.
hernando murcia He was the kind of pilot who flew routes that others would not attempt. Murcia worked for Avian Line Charters, one of the air taxi companies that shuttles people to Colombia’s Amazon region, a pristine rainforest roughly the size of California. Forests are dark, dense, and often dangerous. There are no commercial airports, let alone roads. The meandering river has strong currents and is full of predators such as piranhas and anacondas. A jaguar roams the shore.
The area is known to harbor violent rebel groups and drug smugglers. The rest are sparsely populated. Most of the people who call the Amazon home are indigenous peoples who use private charter flights to reach the outside world.
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Flying on these planes is often a risk of death. The landing strips used by Avian Line and other companies are simply makeshift clearings of dirt and gravel amidst thick vegetation. Many of the sites do not meet Colombian Civil Aviation Authority safety standards. Thunderstorms, heavy rain, and strong winds occur frequently. Colombia has no age limit for aircraft, so the small propeller planes that fly Amazon routes are often very old and don’t have autopilot or other modern safety features. Pilots must be on the lookout for rattling sounds and strange odors. To navigate, you must rely on instincts shaped by experience. There are many radio blind spots above the rainforest, and pilots must travel long distances without contacting the ground.
Nothing bothered Murcia. The 55-year-old has been flying small planes in Colombia for more than 30 years and has been working for Avian Line since 2021. He was willing to fly through heavy rain, even though the propeller plane could crash in an instant. Once, in 2017, the aircraft he was piloting suffered an engine failure and he successfully made an emergency landing on an unfinished road, saving the lives of his passengers.
On April 30, 2023, Murcia will test flights from the southern Amazon town of Araraquara to San José del Guaviare, a densely populated area connected to Colombia’s road network more than 320 miles north. agreed to do so. His aircraft is a blue and white Cessna 206 with registration number HK2803. This plane was manufactured in 1982, but since 2019 it has only been in service in Colombia. By then, he had accumulated thousands of flight hours in the United States. In his 2021 before being acquired by Avianline, HK2803 crashed. No one on board was seriously injured, but the propeller, engine and wings were damaged, requiring extensive repairs before service could resume.
Due to the storm, Murcia’s arrival flight was delayed and Araraquara’s arrival was delayed, so flight HK2803 was rescheduled to the next morning and Murcia stayed overnight in the city. Before going to bed he called his wife Olga Vizcaino and told her that he loved her. He asked her to hug her daughters. Early the next morning, Murcia finished his coffee, scrambled eggs and plantains and headed to his Cessna for his usual pre-flight inspection.
Flight HK2803 was supposed to carry representatives from a company called Yaut, which brokers carbon credits between indigenous peoples and multinational corporations. However, shortly before takeoff, members of the Colombian military stationed at Araraquara approached Murcia. They told him there was a change of plans. They say they need to evacuate indigenous families who fear local rebels want to kill them.
As the family hurried to the back of the Cessna, a local indigenous leader named Herman Mendoza climbed into the front next to Murcia. He said he was there to ensure other passengers reached their destinations safely. Murcia added everyone’s names to the flight manifest, radioed the information to Colombian air traffic control, and then revved the plane’s engines.
At first, Cessna didn’t budge. Recent heavy rains have turned Araraquara’s landing strip into mud, with the plane’s wheels stuck in the mud. As Murcia struggled to free the plane, one of the wheels hit a divot, tilting the plane enough that the propeller hit the ground. Just before 7 a.m. on May 1, the plane finally succeeded in taking off.
The sky was blue that day and there was a slight breeze. All was well for about 30 minutes. But as the Cessna approached Colombia’s Caquetá department, which includes one of the densest, wettest and most remote regions of the Amazon, something went wrong. Murcia radioed to declare an engine failure.
“Mayday, Mayday, 2803,” he said. “The engine is idling. I’m going to look for a field.”
Air traffic control directed him to a nearby landing zone and reported the emergency to the Colombian Air Force, but then the Cessna’s radio signal was lost. The engine returned 15 minutes later and Murcia reported that it was working again. But it didn’t last long, and eight minutes later Murcia was back on the radio.
“Mayday, mayday, 2803, 2803, the engine failed again,” he said.
The Cessna was no longer flying. She was gliding. Murcia needed a place to drop off planes for search and rescue, an opening into the landscape below. However, such store openings are extremely rare on Amazon. In an emergency, some pilots target dense trees. If the plane slows down enough and the nose remains up at the time of impact, the leaves can shake the plane until help arrives.
Instead, Murcia decided to aim for the water. “I’m going to look for a river,” he said. “There’s a river to the right here.” Air traffic control asked him to confirm his location. Murcia answered, “160 km outside of San Jose.” “I’m going to hit the water.”
Those were the last words air traffic controllers heard from Murcia. Immediately thereafter, radar recorded the Cessna making a sharp turn to the right. Then, around 7:50 a.m., she disappeared.
There were no signs of a crash on either Avian Line or the Air Force. There was no debris, no smoke, no noticeable area that had cut through the rainforest canopy. All they saw was an endless sea of green.
Cessna’s words Word of the disappearance spread quickly. In Bogota, Colombia’s Civil Aviation Authority’s search and rescue department examined the plane’s last known coordinates and calculated the maximum distance it could have glided before crashing. This provided a broad area of interest for recovery missions.
By 8:15 a.m., authorities received a distress signal from the plane’s emergency detection transmitter, a device activated by the impact of a crash. ELT also broadcasts her approximate GPS data every 12 hours until the battery dies. His battery dies in two days. The Cessna appears to have been somewhere in an area of about 1.5 square miles, near a small community called Kachiporo on the Apapolis River. Perhaps that was where Murcia was about to land.
When a plane crashes in Colombia, the Civil Aviation Authority is usually responsible for finding it, with both the military and air force arranging for a recovery team. However, due to the Amazon’s vast nature and unique dangers, it was initially considered too dangerous to send people out on foot. Only the Air Force was called in, sending reconnaissance planes over the jungle near Kachipolo in hopes of finding wreckage and possibly survivors.
There was reason to be hopeful. There have been people who survived crashes in places like the Amazon and Colombia before. Most famously, in 1971, a 17-year-old named Julian Koepke was struck by lightning and fell from more than 10,000 feet on board LANSA Flight 508. She walked alone through the Peruvian jungle for 11 days until her rescue.
While the Colombian Air Force became active, Freddy Ladino began organizing his own search for HK2803. The 40-year-old Ladino with a shaved head and pearly white teeth is the founder of Avianline. By 10:30 a.m. on the day of the crash, the company had sent several other aircraft to search for HK2803. However, neither the Avian Line nor the Air Force showed any signs of a crash. There was no debris, no smoke, no noticeable area that had cut through the rainforest canopy. All they saw was an endless sea of green. Searchers must quickly take a different approach.
As Colombian authorities and Avian Line regrouped, families of passengers on HK2803 received word that their loved ones were missing. Murcia’s wife was home with her daughters when she received the call. She prayed that her husband was alive and decided to turn off her television. The accident was already in the headlines and she didn’t want to get caught up in the speculation.
A last-minute change to flight HK2803’s manifest sparked media interest in the incident. The indigenous family on board the plane included Magdalena Muktui Valencia, 34, and her daughters Leslie, 13, Soreini, 9, and Christine, 11 months. They included four young children, including son Tien, 4; Within hours of the Cessna’s disappearance, the fate of Magdalena and her children became haunted in Columbia. International interest also continued. The coming weeks will be filled with breathless news, accusations, misinformation and dashed hopes. It will take 40 days for the world to have an answer.