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Plane CrashesVersion 7

Thirteen killed in Aerodiana sightseeing plane crash over Peru's Nazca Lines

Outlets report no survivors among 11 foreign tourists and two crew after the aircraft went down on August 1, 2026; the cause has not been determined, and reporting has not advanced since August 2.

By AI ReporterFirst reported Aug 1, 2026, 4:36 p.m. ETUpdated Aug 7, 2026, 11:22 a.m. ET
people were killed when a small tourist aircraft operated by crashed in on August 1, 2026, according to reporting by AeroTime, DW, The Journal, Punch, ABC News, the New York Post, Vanguard, Al Jazeera, Slashdot and the Daily Mail. The account below rests on reporting published on August , 2026; no source consulted has added to it since, and the discrepancies noted here remain unresolved in the published record. The aircraft was a , according to Punch, Vanguard and The Journal; AeroTime described it as a and ABC News as a . No registration appears in the available material, so the individual airframe has not been identified. Outlets reported people on board and no survivors, with the dead comprising passengers and crew, according to Vanguard, The Journal, Punch, DW, the Daily Mail and AeroTime. The passengers were seven Italians, Germans and Spaniards, aged 24 to 78, according to those outlets; DW cited the Peruvian broadcaster RPP for the nationalities. The flight was a sightseeing run over the Lines that took off from the airport at , about 240 km south of Lima, according to the reporting, though ABC News reported the aircraft departed from the nearby city of Ica. AeroTime reported a departure time of about 12:10pm . On the time of the crash, Punch and Vanguard reported ""; The Journal and the Daily Mail reported ""; ABC News reported ""; and DW reported "" The reported crash site differs between outlets: , according to Punch, the New York Post, ABC News, the Daily Mail and DW; , according to Vanguard and The Journal; , about six kilometres from the city of , according to AeroTime; and , according to Vanguard. Other reporting placed it in the area of Pueblo Viejo, about six kilometres from . AeroTime reported that shortly after the crew reported an emergency and communication with air traffic control was lost, and that the aircraft caught fire after crashing, making rescue impossible. Outlets reported that the plane lost contact with the control tower minutes after departure, that a nearby resident said it exploded on impact, and that four bodies were recovered initially. Footage showed firefighters dousing the wreckage, according to the Daily Mail. The cause has not been determined. AeroTime, Punch, the New York Post, The Journal, ABC News, the Daily Mail, Vanguard and DW reported the investigation as open; Vanguard also referred to a stage. 's Ministry of Transport and Communications, the country's civil aviation authority and an air accident agency were named as investigating. President Keiko Fujimori said her government was considering a "temporary suspension" or possible closure of airport, according to the reporting, which also noted that flights over the Lines had been suspended on Friday because of winds exceeding 40 kilometres per hour. says it has operated scenic flights over the Lines for the last 14 years, using Cessna Grand Caravan aircraft. Outlets noted similar accidents in 2022, when seven people were killed in a crash over the site, and in 2010; those earlier events say nothing about the cause of this one. Geographic reference data lists , one of the locations named in the reporting, as being in the Province of Huamanga, Ayacucho, with a settlement terrain elevation of 12,497 feet — a figure for the town itself, not for any accident site — about 8.7 miles SSW of Air Force Colonel Alfredo Mendivil Duarte Airport (SPHO/AYP) and 37 miles NW of Vilcashuamán Airport (SPVN).

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Reference data

From aircraft and geographic registries, not from the news sources. Registry records can be out of date, and describe the aircraft and the place only — they say nothing about what happened.

Terrain elevation
12,497 ft
Nearest aerodrome
8.7 miles SSW of Air Force Colonel Alfredo Mendivil Duarte Airport (SPHO/AYP)

Sources

Revision history

  1. Version 77 Aug 2026, 15:22current

    Removed the sentence declaring the event "still developing" and replaced it with a dated statement that the reporting rests on August 2, 2026 coverage and has not advanced since; added a matching note to the dek. Expanded the crash-time paragraph to print each outlet's wording exactly ("shortly after 1:00 pm", "shortly after 1pm", "about 1:00pm local time", "shortly after 1:00 p.m.") rather than collapsing them into one phrase. All other facts, attributions, conflicts and figures — including the 12,497 feet elevation — are unchanged.

  2. Version 64 Aug 2026, 23:40

    Added headline and dek, credited Slashdot in the fatality attribution, noted the operator's use of Cessna Grand Caravan aircraft, and stated that the 2022 and 2010 accidents bear on nothing about this cause.

  3. Version 54 Aug 2026, 23:28

    Added headline and dek, and clarified that no registration appears in the material so the airframe remains unidentified; attribution otherwise unchanged.

  4. Version 44 Aug 2026, 23:23

    Removed the claim that the tail number is unknowable, adding Pisco to the conflicting crash-site list, and added a headline and dek.

  5. Version 34 Aug 2026, 20:09

    Added a statement that the aircraft's registration is unidentified and why, and folded the location reference data into the closing paragraph.

  6. Version 24 Aug 2026, 20:09

    Added multi-outlet sourcing, conflicting aircraft type, crash location and time figures, victim ages and nationalities, crash-site details, Fujimori's airport suspension remarks, prior Nazca wind suspension and Aerodiana's 14 years of operations.

  7. Version 14 Aug 2026, 20:09

    First published.

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