SANTIAGO, Chile — A fleet of military aircraft and navy and merchant ships continue searching the gelid waters north of Antarctica for a Chilean Air Force cargo plane that went missing on Monday evening with 38 people on board.

The plane, a C-130 Hercules, vanished without a trace after making its last radio contact at 6:13 p.m. It was carrying 17 crew members and 21 passengers on a maintenance mission to the Presidente Eduardo Frei Montalva base, a key Chilean outpost on King George Island, off the tip of the Antarctic Peninsula, the air force said in a statement.

President Sebastián Piñera canceled his trip on Tuesday to attend the inauguration of President Alberto Fernández of Argentina and said the government would spare no effort to find the plane.

“We are doing everything humanly possible to find them, despite extraordinarily difficult conditions,” he said.