- Ione Wells of Sao Paulo and Patrick Jackson of London
- BBC News
Video: President Piñera embraces Florencio Ábalos, the first of the trapped Chilean miners to be rescued in 2010.
Former Chilean president Sebastian Piñera, a two-term billionaire businessman, has died at the age of 74 in a helicopter crash.
The plane crashed into a lake near the southern town of Lago Lanco, but the other three people on board survived.
Mr. Piñera was flying his own helicopter, but there was no official confirmation that he was the pilot at the time of the crash.
National mourning was declared, with tributes pouring in from across Latin America's political divide.
The conservative politician is credited with rapid economic growth during his first term from 2010 to 2014.
But his second term, from 2018 to last year, was marred by violent social unrest.
His leftist successor as Chile's president, Gabriel Boric, announced three days of mourning and a state funeral, paying warm tributes to Piñera.
“We are all Chileans and we should dream it, draw it and build it together,” he said. “Sebastián Piñera said this when he was inaugurated for his second term as President on March 11, 2018. We send a big hug to his family and his loved ones during this difficult time. ”
Brazil's leftist President Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva said he was “surprised and saddened” by Piñera's death.
“We hit it off, worked hard to strengthen the relationship between our countries, and always had good dialogue both when he was president and when he wasn't president.” he wrote to x.
Argentina's conservative former president Mauricio Macri said Piñera's death was an “irreplaceable loss” and he felt “immeasurable sadness,” while Colombia's former conservative president Iván Duque expressed his friend's death. He said he felt great sadness.
At a campaign event in Santiago in 2006
In 2010, Piñera became Chile's first conservative president since the end of military rule in 1990.
The Harvard-trained economist will succeed Michelle Bachelet, the country's first female president, and has pledged to use her business acumen to grow the country's economy.
Born in 1949, he became one of Chile's richest men and made his fortune introducing credit cards to Chile through his company Bancard in the 1980s.
He also invested in Chile's largest major airline, Lan Chile, the country's top soccer club, Colo Colo, and a television channel.
