![]() The aircraft involved in the accident in 1979, while still in operation with Union de Transports Aériens | |
Accident | |
---|---|
Date | 18 September 1984 |
Summary | Failed take-off followed by runway excursion and crash due to pilot error |
Site | Mariscal Sucre International Airport, Quito, Ecuador |
Total fatalities | 53 (including 49 on the ground) |
Aircraft | |
Aircraft type | Douglas DC-8-55F |
Operator | Aeroservicios Ecuatorianos (AECA) |
Registration | HC-BKN |
Flight origin | Miami International Airport, Florida, United States |
Stopover | Quito Airport, Quito, Ecuador |
Destination | Simón Bolívar International Airport, Guayaquil, Ecuador |
Occupants | 4 |
Passengers | 0 |
Crew | 4 |
Fatalities | 4 |
Survivors | 0 |
Ground casualties | |
Ground fatalities | 49 |
Aeroservicios Ecuatorianos Flight 767-103 was a scheduled freight flight from Miami in the United States to Guayaquil, Ecuador with an intermediate stop in the Ecuadorian capital Quito. On 18 September 1984 the flight was being operated by a Douglas DC-8-55F jet (registered in Ecuador as HC-BKN). [1] [2] [3] It failed to get airborne during the takeoff run at Quito Airport, hit an Instrument Landing System (ILS) antenna at the end of the runway and then struck several houses. [2] All four crew and 49 people on the ground were killed. [2]
The aircraft was a Douglas DC-8-55F four-engined jet cargo transport that had been built in United States in 1965. [1] First delivered to Trans International Airlines on 18 May 1965 it was bought by Aeroservicios Ecuatorianos in August 1983. [1]
An investigation concluded that the crew failed to notice that the horizontal stabiliser was set at 0.5 degrees nose up when it should have been 8 degrees nose up, this increased the time and distance needed by the aircraft to rotate and the conclusion was the aircraft did not have enough runway length to get airborne. [2] A number of contributory factors were also involved:
The investigation made eight safety recommendations. [2]
Newly-inaugurated President of Ecuador, León Febres Cordero, declared three days of national mourning. [3]
A contributing factor to the accident was the airport's location in the middle of a densely populated area, with public concerns over its risks becoming acute after the AECA tragedy. A near-miss incident, which served as a premonition of another tragedy, came twelve years later on 1 May 1996, when an overloaded Fly Linhas Aéreas Boeing 727, which carried the Corinthians football team overran runway 35 (start of runway 17) after a failed take-off in rainy conditions, hitting the ILS installation, going down a slope or embankment, hitting the perimeter wall and coming to rest in the Tufiño avenue. There were no casualties among the 79 passengers and 11 crew, but the plane was written off. [4] [5]
However, renewed criticism and concerns over the Mariscal Sucre Airport's location would reemerge two years later after the crash of Cubana de Aviación Flight 389, on 29 August 1998, which also occurred after a failed take-off, killing 91 people. [6] The crash, which was an almost identical occurrence to that of AECA's, occurred at the end of the same runway from where the AECA DC-8 crashed 14 years earlier, killing up to ten people in the ground and destroying public and private property.
The CU389 tragedy led to a runway safety area being built at the airport in 1999-2000, which increased the runway excursion space for planes to stop in case of a rejected takeoff or a botched landing. [7] [8] [9] However, a similar safety structure was not built in the opposite end of the runway. In the end, a new airport was finally opened in 2013, about 18 kilometres (11 mi; 9.7 nmi) east of Quito, outside its urban area.
TAME or TAME EP Linea Aerea del Ecuador was an airline founded in Ecuador in 1962. TAME was the flag carrier and the largest airline of Ecuador. TAME headquarters were in Quito, Pichincha Province and the main hub was Mariscal Sucre International Airport in Quito. The airline was formed by the Air Force of Ecuador. In 2011, it became a commercial entity and provided domestic, international and charter flights. On May 20, 2020, the Ecuadorean government decided to cease all operations and liquidate the airline.
Jorge Newbery Airfield, commonly known as Aeroparque, is an international airport 2 km (1.2 mi) northwest of downtown Buenos Aires, Argentina. The airport covers an area of 138 hectares and is operated by Aeropuertos Argentina 2000 S.A. It is located along the Río de la Plata, in the Palermo neighbourhood, and serves as the main hub for domestic flights in Argentina and South American destinations.
Avianca Costa Rica S.A., using callsign as LACSA, minority owned by the Synergy Group, is the national airline of Costa Rica and is based in San José. It operates international scheduled services to over 35 destinations in Central, North and South America. The airline previously used the TACA/LACSA moniker when it was a subsidiary of Grupo TACA. Since May 2013, following Avianca's purchase of Grupo TACA, Avianca Costa Rica became one of seven nationally branded airlines operated by Avianca Group of Latin American airlines.
José Joaquín de Olmedo International Airport is an international airport serving Guayaquil, the capital of the Guayas Province and the most populous city in Ecuador. It is the second busiest airport in Ecuador.
Toncontín Airport formerly Toncontín International Airport, also known as Teniente Coronel Hernán Acosta Mejía Airport is a civil and military airport located 6 km (4 mi) from the centre of Tegucigalpa, Honduras.
The Fairchild F-27 and Fairchild Hiller FH-227 were versions of the Fokker F27 Friendship twin-engined, turboprop, passenger aircraft manufactured under license by Fairchild Hiller in the United States. The Fairchild F-27 was similar to the standard Fokker F27, while the FH-227 was an independently developed, stretched version.
Mariscal Sucre International Airport(IATA: UIO, ICAO: SEQU) was the main international airport that served Quito, Pichincha, Ecuador. It was the busiest airport in Ecuador by passenger traffic, by aircraft movement and by cargo movement, and one of the busiest airports in South America. It was named after Venezuelan-born Antonio José de Sucre, a hero of Ecuadorian and Latin American independence. It began operations on August 5, 1960, and during its last years of operation, handled about 6.2 million passengers and 164,000 metric tons of freight per year. The airport, one of the highest in the world was located in the northern part of the city, in the Chaupicruz parish, within five minutes of Quito's financial center; the terminals were located at the intersection of Amazonas and La Prensa avenues. Mariscal Sucre International was the largest hub for TAME with an average of 50 daily departures.
SAETA Air Ecuador was a privately held airline of Ecuador, which was founded in 1966. During its heyday in the 1990s, it flew to numerous destinations in North and South America from its base in Guayaquil.
LANSA Flight 502 was a Lockheed L-188A Electra operated by Líneas Aéreas Nacionales Sociedad Anónima (LANSA) which crashed shortly after takeoff from Quispiquilla Airport near Cusco, Peru, on August 9, 1970, after losing all power from one of its four engines. The turboprop airliner, registered OB-R-939, was bound from Cusco to Lima, carrying 8 crew and 92 passengers. All but one of the occupants died from injuries sustained from impact forces and post crash fire. Two people on the ground were also killed. There were 49 American high school exchange students on board, all of whom perished. A Peruvian government investigation concluded that the accident was caused by improper execution of engine-out procedures by the flight crew and lack of proper maintenance. LANSA was fined and its operations were suspended for 90 days. At the time, the crash was the deadliest ever in Peruvian history before being surpassed by Faucett Perú Flight 251 in 1996.
Western Airlines Flight 2605, nicknamed the "Night Owl", was an international scheduled passenger flight from Los Angeles, California, to Mexico City, Mexico. On October 31, 1979, at 5:42 a.m. CST (UTC−06:00), the McDonnell Douglas DC-10 used on the flight crashed at Mexico City International Airport in fog after landing on a runway that was closed for maintenance. Of the 89 people on board, 72 were killed, in addition to a maintenance worker who died when the plane struck his vehicle.
Los Garzones International Airport is an international airport serving the city of Montería in the Córdoba Department of Colombia. It is the only airport in the department that can handle modern jets. On normal days, the airport receives between 20 and 30 takeoffs and landings, and is one of the busiest airports in Colombia's Caribbean region in terms of passenger flow.
Mariscal Lamar International Airport is a high elevation airport serving Cuenca, the capital of the Azuay Province in Ecuador. It is named after the Peruvian military leader and politician José de la Mar, a native of Cuenca.
Aviateca Flight 901 was a scheduled international passenger flight which crashed into the 7,159-foot (2,182 m) San Vicente volcano in El Salvador on approach to the Comalapa International Airport on 9 August 1995. The accident killed all 65 passengers and crew on board and is the deadliest aviation disaster to occur in El Salvador. An investigation by the Civil Aviation Authority determined that pilot error and air traffic control error in bad weather contributed to the accident.
TAME Flight 173, a Boeing 737-2V2 Advanced operated by Ecuador's national airline TAME, flying on a domestic route from the now-closed Mariscal Sucre International Airport in Quito to Mariscal Lamar International Airport in Cuenca, crashed into a hill during final approach just 1 mile from its final destination, killing all 119 people on board.
On 13 July 2011, Noar Linhas Aéreas Flight 4896, a Let L-410 Turbolet passenger aircraft on a domestic service from Recife to Mossoró, Brazil, crashed shortly after take-off in the Boa Viagem neighbourhood of Recife, after suffering an engine failure. All 16 people on board were killed.
Allied Air Flight 111 was a cargo flight operated by Lagos-based cargo airliner Allied Air, flying from Lagos, Nigeria to Accra, Ghana. The flight was operated with a Boeing 727 cargo aircraft. On 2 June 2012, the aircraft crashed on landing at Kotoka International Airport, killing ten people on the ground.
Culiacán International Airport, (Spanish: Aeropuerto Internacional de Culiacán); officially Aeropuerto Internacional Federal de Bachigualato(Bachigualato Federal International Airport) (IATA: CUL, ICAO: MMCL), is an international airport located in Culiacán, Sinaloa, Mexico. It serves as the primary air traffic gateway to the Culiacán metropolitan area, offering nonstop flights to many cities in Mexico and serving as a gateway in a heavily traveled air corridor connecting mainland Mexico to the Baja California peninsula. It is also a focus city for Volaris.
Cubana de Aviación Flight 389 (CU389/CUB389) was a scheduled international passenger flight, flying from the former Mariscal Sucre International Airport in Quito to Havana's José Martí International Airport, with a stopover at Simón Bolívar International Airport in Guayaquil, operated by Cuban flag carrier Cubana de Aviación.
On 13 October 1976, a Boeing 707-131F, a chartered cargo aircraft operated for Lloyd Aéreo Boliviano (LAB) crashed shortly after takeoff at El Trompillo Airport, Santa Cruz de la Sierra, Bolivia, into a residential neighbourhood. All three crew on board were killed, along with 88 other fatalities on the ground, bringing the total up to 91. It is the deadliest air disaster to happen on Bolivian soil.