The curse of flights over Nazca: six disasters in less than twenty years

“Accidents happen by accident” is the play on words used by Minister Rafael Rey to comment on the crash of the Aerodiana-operated Cessna Grand Caravan C-208, which crashed on Sunday whilst on a sightseeing flight over the Nazca Lines, resulting in the deaths of all 13 people on board. Two of the crew members were Peruvian; the 11 tourists included two Germans, two Spaniards and seven Italians. Two families from Brianza have been devastated. One was the Monza-based family of 59-year-old Paolo Gianturco, a senior partner at Deloitte, the renowned Anglo-American consultancy and auditing firm, and his wife, 57-year-old Cristina Maria Bianco, a director at Andersen Consulting after having founded the executive search firm Aegis, with their sons Matteo and Pietro, aged 24 and 18, The other was the family of their friend, 58-year-old Massimo Angelucci, owner of Icma Tecno, a company specialising in mechanical components based in Lissone, with his wife Elena Sala, who is the same age, and their 24-year-old son Lorenzo.

The aircraft had taken off from Pisco Airport when the crew reported an emergency to the control tower, according to the Minister for Foreign Trade and Tourism, Rogers Valencia. Shortly afterwards, radio contact was lost and the aircraft crashed in the Pueblo Viejo area, catching fire. Speaking at a press conference, the minister stated that there is not yet sufficient information to understand the reasons behind the disaster and that it would be “irresponsible” to speculate, but that the airline operating the flight has been suspended in the meantime, whilst the sector reviews the authorisations and conditions required for civil aviation. For her part, President Keiko Fujimori, who had only just taken office last Wednesday, said that the government is considering new measures whilst investigations continue to determine the causes.

Over 100,000 tourists visit Peru’s most famous tourist attraction every year, alongside the ‘lost city’ of Machu Picchu. With thousands of flights, because this is a wonder that must be seen from above.

There are hundreds of figures etched into the surface of the Jumana plains, in the Nazca Desert, Ica Department, ranging from simple lines to complex zoomorphic, phytomorphic and geometric shapes. Their surface consists of a layer of dark red pebbles, the result of oxidation, which covers a lighter, yellowish layer. The Nazca people removed the top stones by following a path marked by poles connected by ropes. The removed stones were piled into small mounds, some of which are still preserved. The Nazca Desert, with its extremely arid climate and the almost total absence of wind and rain, has provided an ideal environment for the preservation of these lines. Pseudo-archaeology has interpreted them as signals to extraterrestrials, or as evidence that the ancient Peruvians could fly. In short, landing strips. More conventional theories suggest a large astronomical calendar or ritual and religious figures, but recently the Japanese scientist Masato Sakai and his team from Yamagata University, having identified 300 new geoglyphs thanks to AI, have argued that the lines may simply mark roads and paths.

The Nazca culture is an archaeological culture of ancient Peru that flourished around the 1st century and declined in the 7th century; it was particularly skilled in the production of pottery and musical instruments, as well as having developed a highly advanced agricultural system. It was situated mainly in the valleys of what is now the department of Ica, and was discovered by the German archaeologist Max Uhle in 1901. However, the first reference to its figures was made by the conquistador Pedro Cieza de León in 1547, and in an attempt to understand their meaning, twenty years later the corregidor Luis Monzón wrote that they were in fact roads. But it was with the advent of aviation that the lines became more evident, famous and visible. The first scientific investigation took place in 1932, conducted by the archaeologists Julio César Tello and Toribio Mejía Xesspe. Like the corregidor Monzón, they too believed that they were simply roads.

In 1941, however, the American anthropologist Paul Kosok proposed that the lines were the ‘world’s largest calendar’ and that their purpose was to indicate the position of the sun and the celestial bodies. The coincidence of the patterns on Nazca pottery with the figures on the plain led archaeologists to conclude that the lines were created between 200 and 600 BC. The first systematic field study of these drawings began in 1996 and is attributed to the archaeologists Markus Reindel and Johny Isla Cuadrado. They documented and excavated more than 650 sites and succeeded in reconstructing the history of the culture that created these designs. Research by Nicola Masini and Giuseppe Orefici subsequently revealed a spatial, functional and religious relationship between the geoglyphs and the temples of Cahuachi. Prior to Sakai’s work, the most recent research – published in 2021 in the *Journal of Tourism and Heritage Research* – had hypothesised that the Nazca Lines constituted a complex water management system, a refined application of the well-known pre-Inca technique known as ‘water harvesting’. The idea of a landing strip for spaceships dates back to Erich von Däniken and his 1968 book "Chariots of the Gods?",

“Throughout our 18 years in business, we have maintained a constant commitment to the safety of our passengers and crew. This incident therefore affects us deeply and reaffirms our willingness to cooperate fully and responsibly in any way required by the authorities,” said Aerodiana. Antonio López, a Spanish national living in Peru who had flown with his parents on the aircraft that crashed the week before the incident, reported experiencing severe turbulence, which he had, however, expected, knowing that the winds in Paracas are “violent and unpredictable”. However, some of his acquaintances had refused to take that flight, aware of previous incidents.

In fact, in April 2008, a small Aero Ica aircraft struck high-voltage cables and crashed into the wall of a house adjacent to María Reiche Airport, killing five French passengers. The pilot was the sole survivor. On 25 February 2010, a Nasca Airlines Cessna 206 crashed into a farm field in the Lines area following an engine failure, killing three Chilean and four Peruvian tourists. In October 2010, an AirNasca aircraft suffered a mechanical failure, resulting in the deaths of four British tourists and two Peruvian crew members. Between 2013 and 2021, the ministry of Transport and Communications recorded several accidents and operational incidents involving tourist flights in the area, including emergency landings, engine failures and mechanical malfunctions. On 4 February 2022, a Cessna 207 crashed just seconds after taking off from Maria Reiche Airport, killing five tourists – two Chileans and three Dutch nationals – and two crew members. The official investigation concluded that a gradual loss of engine power had caused a loss of lift prior to impact with the ground.