BRASILIA, Brazil - At least nine of the 11 people aboard a Brazilian military transport plane that crashed deep in the Amazonian jungle have been found alive and well by tribesmen, the Brazilian Air Force said Oct. 30.
One person on the flight that went down Oct. 29 was found trapped in the plane and is presumed dead, while another apparently went searching for help and is missing, the statement said.
Members of the Native American Matis tribe discovered the plane and its crew and passengers "in the middle of the Amazon jungle" between two villages, a statement from the Brazilian Air Force said.
The plane apparently crash-landed on the Itui River, a small tributary of the Amazon.
The single-propeller C-98 Caravan transport plane lost radio contact Oct. 29 as it was flying from Cruzeiro do Sul, in northern Acre state, to Tabatinga in Amazonas, in far northwestern Brazil, the Air Force said.
Four crew members and seven passengers - two women and five men, all health ministry employees - were aboard the plane when it vanished.
The passengers belonged to a health team that included municipal workers undertaking an immunization campaign in indigenous communities, a spokesman for the National Health Foundation (FUNASA) in Cruzeiro do Sul told AFP.
The missing person was a member of the military crew who went searching for help to rescue the person trapped inside the plane, a FUNASA spokesman said Oct. 30.
Eight aircraft, including Black Hawk helicopters and an airborne radar plane, had been scouring the rainforest searching for the missing transport plane.
Aviation expert Gustavo Cunha Mello told Globonews network said that the C-98 Caravan is a slow-flying plane and built in a way that would likely allow passengers and crew to survive if there was an emergency landing.
The Army's Future Combat Systems (FCS) program is ready to test a few components that soldiers may have in their hands by 2010.
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