American Jetliner With 29 Aboard Missing in Bolivia

U.S. and Bolivian planes searched the snowcapped Andes today for an Eastern Airlines jet that disappeared with 29 people aboard 11 minutes before its scheduled landing at La Paz airport.

There was a report that some wreckage was spotted but there was no confirmation it was the missing Boeing 727.

Marian Davis, wife of U.S. Ambassador to Paraguay Arthur H. Davis, was one of the eight Americans reported aboard the plane, State Department spokesman Alan Romberg said in Washington. Airport officials in La Paz identified another of the American passengers as William Kelley, director of the Peace Corps in Paraguay.

The missing plane, Eastern’s Flight 980, left Asuncion, Paraguay, at 5:57 p.m. Tuesday and was due in La Paz at 7:48 p.m. on its way to Miami.

The last contact with the crew of the Eastern flight was a radio conversation with the pilot 11 minutes before the jet’s scheduled landing Tuesday evening, said Richard McGraw, an Eastern senior vice president in Miami. The pilot said in that transmission that he planned to land a minute early.

The pilot was told to lower his plane’s altitude, then at 35,000 feet, to 25,000 and make radio contact when he did so, but the pilot was never heard from again, airport officials said.

Bolivian officials said there was no indication the plane was having technical difficulties and the skies were clear when the plane was last heard from.

La Paz airport does not use radar to track planes.

In Miami, McGraw said there were 19 passengers aboard and 10 crew members. He said three passengers and five crew members are Americans.

The Federal Aviation Administration said in Washington that wreckage believed to be that of the Eastern jet had been spotted about 50 miles from the airport in “the general area” of the plane’s last known location as established by radio contact.

An FAA spokesman, Fred Farrar, did not say who spotted the wreckage but he said he was aware of a conflicting report by the U.S. consul in La Paz, who said after flying aboard a U.S. search plane that what had been first thought to be airplane wreckage high in the Andes had turned out to be a rock formation.

Crewmen aboard the U.S. government plane, a Beech 200, scanned the slopes and passes of the Andes for two hours but did not sight the Eastern jet, said the consul, Royce Fichte. He said another flight was planned when the cloud cover lifted.