Tourist plane crashes near Peru’s Nazca Lines, killing 13

A small plane carrying tourists over Peru’s Nazca Lines crashed Saturday, killing all 13 people on board, police and local officials said.

The aircraft was flying over the famed archaeological site in southern Peru when it went down around 1 p.m. local time in the Pueblo Viejo region after departing from an airport in Pisco. Police said the dead included 11 passengers and two pilots.

“We have information that 11 passengers and two crew members have died,” Police Major Jorge Andrade told reporters from the crash site, according to Al Jazeera.

Andrade also said there were no survivors. “Given the severity of the accident, there are no survivors. We have recovered four bodies so far,” he said, according to AFP, as reported by the BBC.

The cause of the crash was not immediately clear, and officials had not released the identities or nationalities of those on board. Authorities described the passengers as mostly tourists. Local media reports cited by Al Jazeera said the crash site was quickly engulfed in flames, preventing rescues.

The Municipalidad Provincial de Nasca, in a Spanish-language statement posted online, expressed “deep sorrow” over the accident and extended “heartfelt condolences to the families of the deceased.” The municipality said the plane belonged to Aerodiana, a local Peruvian airline and sightseeing company. The BBC said it had contacted the airline for comment.

The Nazca Lines, a UNESCO World Heritage site, are among Peru’s best-known tourist attractions. Located in the desert near the country’s southern coastal region, the site is made up of enormous geoglyphs carved into the ground. The figures, which date from between 500 B.C. and 500 A.D., include animals, stylized plants, imaginary beings and geometric designs stretching several kilometers.

UNESCO describes the site as “among archaeology’s greatest enigmas because of their quantity, nature, size and continuity.” The agency says the geoglyphs are believed to have had “ritual astronomical functions.”

Because of their size, the Nazca Lines are often viewed from the air. Flights over the desert allow visitors to see figures such as monkeys, hummingbirds and cats more clearly than from the ground.

Peru is a major destination for international tourists, who travel to historical and archaeological sites including Machu Picchu, Cusco and the Nazca Lines. More than 4.1 million tourists visited the country of nearly 35 million people in 2025, according to Peru’s Ministry of Foreign Trade and Tourism, as reported by Al Jazeera.

Saturday’s crash was not the first fatal aviation accident involving tourist flights over the Nazca Lines. In 2022, another small tourist plane crashed during a flight over the site, killing seven people. In 2010, six people died when a tourist plane went down over the area.