The bodies of Canadian pilot captain Blake Slater, 32, along with cargo handler Dwayne Jacobs were discovered today after their aircraft went missing on the weekend.
Forested area where plane and bodies were discovered. Photo courtesy – Gordon Moseley
Newssource Guyana is reporting that the Trans Guyana aircraft was discovered in the densely forested Olive Creek, Mazuruni area noon on Sunday. The aviation authority said the plane was reportedly seen going down two minutes after it took off.
Newssource Guyana editor Gordon Moseley told Skedline.com that the Cessna Caravan had just taken off from the Olive Creek mining area and was headed to another mining area called Imbaimadai when it was seen going down on Sunday.
Trans Guyana Public relations officer Kit Nascimento said Slater was able to make a distress call to air traffic control but was unable to give any information before the plane went down.
Mazuruni river area where the aircraft was discovered.
Guyana Defence Force ground troops joined forces with several privately-owned aircraft to search for the plane immediately after Slater’s mayday call. According to Nascimento, the search operation was very difficult.
“The area is densely forested. Presently arrangements are being made to extract the bodies by helicopter. We will be using another aircraft to fly the bodies out to the Georgetown Public Hospital Corporation,” said Nascimento.
According to Nascimento, Slater joined Trans Guyana in April 2011 as a senior pilot and was later promoted as command pilot.
Newton and Slater were the only ones on board the aircraft.
