The last contact with the aircraft was 30 or 40 minutes after take-off, when the pilot reported a fire in one of the engines and notified the control tower of San José International Airport in Costa Rica that they intended to divert there.

[1] It was assigned to the 1st Air Brigade based in El Palomar and immediately began to be used for relocation flights of military personnel, officials and relatives.

The last two transmissions from the aircraft were at 06:27 when the DC-4 reported to Panama tower confirming that it had reached position "Mike-5" without incident at an altitude of 6500 and was heading for San Salvador.

The "Mike-5" position is a navigational point close to Escudo de Veraguas island on the Panamanian Caribbean Mosquitoes Gulf of the Bocas del Toro Province.

Relatives rejected the official version and continued to demand the search for the plane in the Costa Rican jungle, convinced that the aircraft could well be in some inaccessible place and not on the seabed.

Groups of relatives of the cadets and officers repeatedly entered the Costa Rican jungle and made contact with the natives who lived around the Cordillera de Talamanca, looking for any clue that would allow them to find the whereabouts of their loved ones.

After the disappearance, an investigation carried out by the United States[6] concluded that the aircraft crashed in the sea between Panama and Costa Rica, 30 km from the coast.

A de-classified video of a United States Navy (USN) helicopter marking the location of life vests and objects in the sea was later shown to family members.