Ecuador plane carrying 92 people missing over Andes Mountains

QUITO, Ecuador - A commercial jetliner carrying 92 people was declared missing Monday after it lost radio contact and failed to arrive at its destination on the border with Colombia, Ecuador&#39;s Civil Aviation department said. <br> <br> The Boeing 727-100 from Ecuador&#39;s TAME airline lost radio contact at 10:23 a.m., the department said in a statement. It was carrying 83 passengers and nine crew members, the statement said. <br> <br> The jetliner was heading from the capital, Quito, to the border city of Tulcan, 85 miles to the north in the high Andes Mountains. Its last contact was with the control tower at the Tulcan airport. <br> <br> &#34;The plane is in the disappeared category since the control tower lost its signal,&#34; Pablo Lopez, chief of Quito&#39;s Mariscal Sucre International Airport, said. <br> <br> A plane from Ecuador&#39;s state-owned oil company with 26 people on board crashed in Colombian territory Jan. 17 while from Quito to Lago Agrio, an oil outpost in the Amazon jungle 110 miles northeast of Quito. <br> <br> Six days later, searchers found the wreckage of the twin-engine propeller plane on a jungle-covered hillside a few miles across the border. All 21 passengers and five crew members on board died. <br> <br> Tulcan is about 30 miles northwest of where the oil company plane crashed. <br> <br> <br>

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