They find possible remains of the missing plane with five Germans on board

SAN JOSE, Oct. 22 (DPA/EP) –

The Costa Rican authorities have reported this Saturday the sighting of the possible remains of a plane with five Germans on board that disappeared in the last few hours near the coast.

The Costa Rican Vice Minister of Public Security, Martín Arias, has indicated today that the remains “apparently indicate that they belong to the aircraft.”

In addition, other objects have been found in the sea 28 kilometers from the Costa Rican airport in Puerto Limón, the destination of the plane that disappeared from radar on Friday afternoon.

The Piaggio 180 private plane took off from Mexico on Friday and was heading to the Costa Rican province of Limón when radio contact with the Barra de Parismina airport was suddenly interrupted at around 6:00 p.m.

Among the crew members was the millionaire and founder of the McFit gym chain, Rainer Schaller; his girlfriend, Christiane Schikorsky, and his children Aaron and Finja and a man named Marcus Kurreck, according to the German tabloid ‘Bild’.

A McFit spokeswoman, Jeanine Minaty, has confirmed to ‘Bild’ that Schaller, her partner and their children were traveling on the plane. “We don’t know anything else at the moment”, she has pointed out.

Schaller founded the McFit chain in 1996 and already has more than 250 gyms in Europe and is the head of the Loveparade electronic music festival.

“The plane disappeared from the radar about 25 miles from the Limón airport. The plane was supposed to land at 6:58 p.m., we lost it at a height of 2,000 feet,” explained the director of the Costa Rican Civil Aviation Authority, Fernando Naranjo. , to the television channel Teletica.

Search efforts were initially suspended overnight due to unfavorable weather conditions and were resumed early Saturday morning by the Coast Guard and the Air Space Surveillance Authority.

The Piaggio P.180 Avanti private aircraft had taken off from Palenque, in the Mexican state of Chiapas. The ruined Mayan city located there is a UNESCO World Heritage Site and one of the most important archaeological sites in Mexico.