Five people have been rescued after spending 36 hours atop a plane in an alligator-infested swamp in the Amazon after it was forced to make an emergency landing, local authorities said.
The small plane was found by local fishermen in Bolivia’s Amazonas region on Friday having been missing for 48 hours.
The survivors - three women, a child and the 29-year-old pilot - were rescued in “excellent condition”, Wilson Avila, director of the Beni Department’s emergency operations centre, said.
A search and rescue mission was launched on Thursday after the plane disappeared from the radar of the Beni Department in central Bolivia.
the pilot doesn’t deserve being gendered? the child, okay I can see having their info private. but “3 women, and child, and the pilot” just seems a lil weird y’know
they’re named as Andres so they’re probably male identifying (edit- the article also uses “he”, so even likelier that they’re male identifying) but still, the women are ID’d by their gender, but the child and pilot by their “role” or age or something. I hope it was a consent thing, the pilot didn’t want to be listed by their gender, but the women were okay with it?
anyway, they couldn’t drink the water they were floating in because of leaking plane fuel contaminating it, but they had some flour to eat so they were in somewhat healthy conditions. quoted as “amazing conditions”, but I think that’s relative to having been deemed missing for those 48hrs
they were extremely fortunate, but still that’s gotta be a mind fuck to be surrounded by human-eating reptiles just lurking in the water outside the contaminated area. don’t fall in! life saving water within arms reach but you can’t get it safely. I’m glad they were airlifted to hospital, they probably needed a rehydration/water IV inserted
I read it as “readers know the plane must have had a pilot, so we’re going to specifically mention that the pilot was also okay”. And I would rather pilot remain a genderless word over references to “pilot” and “pilotess”, or “the male pilot / the female pilot” or some other such nonsense.
They probably should have paralleled that by using “passengers”, then.