A civil servant from Hendon, North London, is feared dead, after the skydiving plane she was travelling in, crashed off a popular tourist beach in Mexico, with horrified tourists looking on.
Varsha Maisuria, 42 and her instructor Robin Ballachey are understood to have become entangled with the Cessna 180 aircraft as they left the plane on a tandem skydive.
The pilot is believed to have descended close to the surface of the sea just 500m from the popular tourist resort of Las Glorias Beach, Puerto Vallarta, where the plane crashed.
The pilot and two male passengers survived, but search and rescue teams are still working to find Ms Maisuria and US national Ms Ballachey after the crash on Thursday at around 3:40pm local time. The small plane is understood to have sunk 1,000m to the sea bed.
Her younger brother, who asked not to be named, told the Evening Standard: “We are absolutely distraught. She was the only daughter and the eldest child in our family...”
A Foreign Office spokesman said: “We are aware of a British national missing in Mexico and we are providing consular assistance.”