A small plane carrying four passengers crashed in the central Philippines on Sunday, prompting rescuers to seek survivors, according to an aviation authority.
The Cessna 340 plane went missing early Saturday morning shortly after taking off from Bicol International Airport, south of Manila, according to the Civil Aviation Authority of the Philippines (CAAP).
According to the aviation regulator, the plane was carrying two passengers, a pilot, and a staff member.
According to CAAP spokesperson Eric Apolonio, a local search and rescue team has found a possible crash site near the airport.
“The problem is the weather is bad and it hampers the visibility of the ground search,” he added.
The aviation accident comes less than a month after another Cessna plane went missing on January 24 in the northern province of Isabela. A search for that plane’s wreckage is still ongoing, Apolonio said.
In a separate incident, two Philippine airforce aviators were also killed in a training exercise last month when their SF260 Marchetti plane plummeted onto a rice paddy in Bataan province, near Manila.
