Plane with 33 aboard crashes in Brazil

The wreckage was spotted by search helicopters about 20km from Manaos, near the river Negro, but there was no immediate word if there were any survivors.

The Rico Airlines plane -- a Brazilian-manufactured Brasilia -- took off from the town of Sao Paulo de Olivenca near the border with Colombia and was scheduled to stop at Manaos but never arrived there, the officials said.

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"The last radio contact with the pilot took place on Friday at about 2200 GMT, when the plane was approaching Manaos," said one Rico representative.

Shortly after that conversation, the plane failed to make radio contact with a regional monitoring system and quickly disappeared from radar screens.