After the crash of German entrepreneur Rainer Schaller’s private plane off the coast of Costa Rica, the emergency services have expanded their search. In consultation with the authorities of the neighboring country, an aerial search was also carried out in Panamanian waters for wreckage, said the director of the Costa Rican coast guard, Martín Arias, on Monday. Initially, however, no further debris was found there either. The search operation with around 60 emergency services will continue as long as necessary.
There were a total of six people on board the machine at the time of the accident on Friday evening: McFit founder Schaller, his partner, the two children, another German and the Swiss pilot. The bodies of a man and a child, as well as debris and luggage, were found in the sea over the weekend. Sea currents would also be taken into account in the search, said Public Safety Minister Jorge Torres.
The weather conditions were better for the search teams on Monday than in the previous days. The plane came from Mexico and crashed into the sea near the Caribbean coast of Costa Rica. The cause of the crash initially remained unclear. The private plane did not have a flight recorder or a device to record communications. Because of the small size of the aircraft, they were not mandatory, according to the Costa Rican authorities.