The plane was eventually found at 5,310 meters (17,420 feet) by two members of the Nuevos Horizontes mountaineering club, Pablo Chiquiza and Flavio Armas, while exploring a new hiking route to the summit of Chimborazo.

Months later, on 14 February 2003, widespread news of the plane's discovery by mountaineer Miguel Cazar, who was interviewed by Teleamazonas, revealed that they had seen both metal and human remains in the García Moreno glacier of the Chimborazo volcano.

The mountaineers and discoverers, Chíquiza and Armas, accompanied by soldiers from Ecuador's "Special Forces 9th Brigade" (Spanish: Brigada de Fuerzas Especiales N°9 Patria), arrived at the volcano to mark the exact site where they found the remains of the plane.

After reading the newspapers of the time and confirming with a document from the General Civil Aviation Directorate (DAC) obtained by retired Major Galo Arrieta, they concluded that the plane still had not been found.

[5] Therefore, on 23 December of the same year, Chíquiza and Armas ventured back up to the Chimborazo, this time specifically looking for evidence such as personal artifacts or aircraft identifiers that could verify the presumed identity of the flight.

According to Bernardo Abad, a journalist for Teleamazonas, they asked for thousands of dollars for the video Rodrigo Donoso delivered to the channel and its subsequent broadcast.

On his side of the case, Arrieta admitted that he knew of the discovery but, according to him, "had to make sure the president (Lucio Gutiérrez) was the first to find out and for this reason, could not share the news with other people."

Later, by the suggestion of the military and the climbers Chíquiza and Armas, the area where they found the remains was declared a holy field due to the difficulty of recovering all the bodies.