The United States Embassy in Manila on Sunday vowed to assist the government in finding a missing Cessna plane and its pilot, which is believed to have crashed in the mountain ranges of Aurora last month.
The assurance was made after Foreign Affairs Secretary Teodoro Locsin Jr. personally appealed to the embassy through his social media page to assist in the search.
“We need a special satellite image that can penetrate the jungle to detect plane’s aluminum. CAAP [Civil Aviation Authority of the Philippines]has no capability whatsoever in this weather for this mission,” Locsin said, tagging the embassy in one of his public tweets.
“One more day and it won’t be search & rescue but search & recovery of cadaver. Please US help,” Locsin wrote on his Twitter account.
In response, the embassy said Washington is ready to assist as a “friend, partner, and ally.”
“[The US Embassy in the Philippines] is ready to assist. We’ve been in touch with Philippine authorities to determine what assistance is needed and how we can help,” the embassy said.
The missing C-152 plane, piloted by 25-year-old Aaron Dizon, was supposed to have landed in Clark after it left Baler on July 28.
The aircraft, owned by Omni Aviation Corp., is one of the five planes that took off from San Luis town in Baler. However, only four managed to land in Clark.
