Members of Cruise film crew killed in plane crash in Colombia

BOGOTA, Colombia – Actor Tom Cruise flew in a helicopter across the Colombian Andes just 10 minutes before a small plane on the same dangerous flight path crashed into a jungled mountain, killing two crew members from his upcoming movie, civil aviation authorities said.

An official with the aviation agency, who spoke on condition of anonymity, said the cause of the crash Friday that killed two people and seriously injured a third was still under investigation.

Those killed were veteran Hollywood pilot Alan Purwin and Venezuelan Carlos Berl, while another American, Jimmy Lee Garland, survived. All were experienced pilots although it’s not clear which of the three was in command of the plane at the time of the crash, the official said.

They crashed while returning to the city of Medellin on the twin-engine Piper Aerostar 600 after a day of filming with Cruise for the film “Mena,” which stars the actor as American pilot Barry Seal, a drug runner recruited in the 1980s by the CIA to try to capture the late cocaine kingpin Pablo Escobar.

Cruise, a pilot, arrived in Medellin last month flying the same 1960s-era plane, which was similar to the one Seal would have flown for Escobar’s cartel, the official said. Photos of the actor sitting in the cockpit of the U.S.-registered plane, and standing with Purwin outside the aircraft, have circulated for days in social media.

On Friday, Cruise left in one of two helicopters transporting crew from the colonial town of Santa Fe de Antioquia at around 5 p.m. local time. When they arrived at Medellin’s Olaya Herrera airport with nightfall approaching, and the plane didn’t show up, they alerted air traffic controllers, the official said.

A plane overhead located the downed aircraft just below a high ridge thanks to a distress signal, allowing rescuers to arrive to the crash site quickly and rush Garland to a hospital in Medellin, where he was in critical but stable condition.

“We were very lucky to get there so quickly,” said the official.

This is the second time an aviator has died while working on a film with Cruise. Famed stunt pilot Art Scholl went down in waters near San Diego while performing a nose dive during the 1985 making of “Top Gun.”

Although there were no reports of bad weather in Santa Fe de Antioquia when the plane took off, the official described the normally 10-minute flight as a “bungee jump” or “roller coaster” requiring a skilled pilot to quickly take the plane from near sea level to a height of 3,000 meters, or 9,800 feet, to clear the Andes before descending sharply for the approach into the steep valley surrounding Medellin.

The official said the three pilots had flown the route at least a half-dozen times in recent days but were flying without the assistance of instruments and could have been disoriented by heavy clouds that regularly form near the crest of the Andes.