Chile's Air Force on Tuesday said one of its cargo planes had crashed with 38 people on board after going missing in an isolated area between South America and the Antarctic, with the chance of finding survivors looking "difficult".

The Hercules C-130 aircraft took off at 4:55 p.m. (1955 GMT) on Monday from the southern city of Punta Arenas in Chilean Patagonia and was heading to a base in Antarctica. But controllers lost contact with the plane shortly after 6:00 p.m.

The Air Force said in a statement it had yet to locate the plane but had concluded the plane must have crashed, given the number of hours it had been missing. The defence minister added that hope for finding survivors was fading.