1976 Missing Plane Found on Volcano Peak Wed February 19, 2003 09:59 AM ET QUITO, Ecuador (Reuters) - Ecuadorean climbers found parts of a plane missing since 1976 scattered on snow-capped Chimborazo volcano, solving a mystery that had perplexed authorities for more than a quarter of a century, an official said on Tuesday. Saeta airlines' four-engine Vickers Viscount -- missing since Aug. 15, 1976, with 59 people aboard -- was found shattered on this nation's biggest volcano located 90 miles south of Quito in the Andes mountains. Mountain climbers had reported sighting plane parts and baggage stuck in ice more than 5,000 meters (15,000 feet) up Chimborazo, which prompted authorities to start an investigation on Monday. "The parts found have been visually verified. They are from the Saeta plane," Civil Aviation Deputy Director Ivan Arellano told local Radio Quito, after army climbers reached the site near the top of the 6,310-meter (20,823 feet) peak. The missing flight was a mystery to locals who speculated the plane might have been seized by drug traffickers or even extraterrestrials. Family members traveled to Chimborazo hoping to recover their loved ones' belongings, after local television showed newspaper clippings and documents pulled from the peak. "Hope is the last thing that is lost, as the saying goes, and providence, God, wanted this (the discovery) to come true today," a family member told local television. "These have been 26 years of uncertainty." Two Saeta flights disappeared in the Andes on their way from Quito to the highland city of Cuenca in the 1970s. One was found crashed about five years after it disappeared in 1979; the other was missing until Tuesday. Ecuador is struggling to improve air safety to win a category upgrade to allow more flights to head to its top destination, the United States, but still must work on safety controls, according to international experts. Saeta ceased operations in 2000 due to financial problems. *************************************************** The owner of Roger's Trinbago Site/TnTisland.com Roj (Roger James) escape email mailto:ejames@escape.ca Trinbago site: www.tntisland.com Carib Brass Ctn site www.tntisland.com/caribbeanbrassconnection/ Steel Expressions www.mts.net/~ejames/se/ Site of the Week: http://www.trotters.net TnT Webdirectory: http://search.co.tt *********************************************************