Crash in Venezuela
 

Sorry to report this. 152 people onboard. No further details yet.

Just seen the Breaking News on Sky News. Seems to be down in the border area with Colombia.
Not a good few days for aviation :(
Have to hope there are survivors

MD80 emergency ?
 

Any further info on a MD80 emergency reporting problems with both engines, 155 pob at 07:30 UTC, registration HK-4374 enroute MPTO to TFFF ?

Hoping for some good news ...

My Spanish isn't flash but..........

"........el piloto reporto emergencia en sus dos turbinas posiblemente se siniestro..."

Double engine failure??????

Woomera

the pilot I report emergency in its two turbines possibly sinister

(babelfish translation)

This from the Associated Press:

URGENT
Passenger plane crashes in Venezuela with 152 passengers
aboard, official says

CARACAS, Venezuela (AP) - A passenger plane crashed in
remote western Venezuela with 152 passengers aboard early
Tuesday, an aviation official said. It was unclear whether
anyone survived.
The West Caribbean Airways plane was headed from Panama to
Martinique when its pilot reported engine trouble to the
Caracas airport, said Francisco Paz, president of the
National Aviation Institute. Airport authorities lost radio
contact with the plane later in the area of Machiques, in
the western state of Zulia, he said.


161147 aug 05GMT

"Siniestro". Are you guys sure this doesn't just mean left, ie. the left engine ?

Info on the airline...

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/West_Caribbean_Airways

Direct translation:
....The pilot has reported an emergency on both his engines probably has crashed...

http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/world/americas/4156224.stm

BBC reporting it too, sounds like its in a pretty remote part of the world, if it's come down its probably not so good.

Thoughts with all those involved, hoping for the best

Low chances of survival going down in remote western Venezuela. Jungle vegetation will further hamper rescue efforts. Lets hope…

If the registration is correct (HK-4374X), this is the aircraft in question:

http://myaviation.net/search/photo_s...hp?id=00417078

Some reports mention that engines failed one after another. According to the Venezuelan interior minister:

some one on CNN saying it lost one engine, turned back then lost the other.
Also an expert predicting a decent rate of 7000ft/min...dick

"The pilot asked permission to enter Venezuelan air space and land at Maracaibo airport due to a failure in one of its engines, reported the minister. Soon after this, he reported that the second engine was failing too. From this point on, the airplane began to loose altitude at 7.000 f/m and crashed"

Another sad day for aviation. Too many accidents in very few days.

Descending at nearly 35m/s? That seems rather fast. I hope - if it is an engine failure - that people have survived.

Swedish media claim 160 onboard and total loss, the Mad-dog was 19-years old according http://www.aviation-safety.net

Don't know much about this airline, but it would appear as if they were recently in the news for maintenance issues:

"02 JUL 2005 West Caribbean Airways temporarily suspends operations
The Colombian airline West Caribbean Airways temporarily suspended its operations after Colombian authorities grounded the MD-80 fleet of the airline reportedly because of non-compliance with an airworthiness directive. The AD ordered the operator to install fire retarding insulation material. (Diario la Republica)"

Courtesy of Aviation Safety Network.

Double engine failure on an MD-80 is not good. The wings are not that efficient to begin with and if the CG was forward without engine power you are going to need a place to land in a hurry.

RIP :(

Both Helios and this company are very young...started operations in 1998 i believe...

Before this thread gets out of hand like the some of the other incident threads I'd like to ask that posters refrain from posting the usual "condolences", "rest in peace" etc messages. This is a discussion forum and we can all take it as fact that we are sorry for the families of the pax and crew. It's bad enough keeping this forum for debate by those in the business without having to fend off the sometimes overwhelming commentary from so called armchair experts with theories that often border on the bizarre.

So, if you are familiar with the aircraft type ether as a pilot, crew member or engineer or else you are familiar with the airline or the route and location of the accident then feel free to discuss. If you are none of the above but have a question for anyone of the above then feel free. If you are going to make assumptions then at least can we have your qualification for doing so. Also, there is no need for endless links to media articles about the incident unless there is something new that has not been aired here already.

Finally, let me repeat, that this is not the place for grieving messages of condolence. It's a 'given' that we feel for the victims and their families and let's leave it at that.

Some news data is being compiled here:

http://www.md80.net/yabbse/index.php...8.html#msg6458

Some background on the airline below. The plane is an ex-Continental 1986-build parked in Mojave right after 9-11 for 39 months.

http://www.md80.net/yabbse/index.php/topic,644.0.html

Descend rate for a clean MD-80 with both engines out is roughly 2500fpm.

Completely recognising Danny's comments above, I do have a technical point to question.
My kitbuilt 'thingy' clean best glide gives 1200fpm. With gear down, about 1600fpm. This still lets me practice my PFL from downwind to a smooth landing on the runway, although very steep, but round out positive with best glide speed maintained.

Decades ago, a Trident captain assured me that he could confidently land it with no power from a glide approach.
We have had much more recently a mid-antlantic Airbus, all fuel leaked out, managing to dead stick it into the Azores with no loss of life. What wonderful piloting!

2500fpm in an MD82 seems wholly consistent with all this.

Why was it overland by the Columbia/Venezuela border on a flight from Panama to Martinique? Could not all have survived if he landed on the sea, especially if he had altitude to position it by a beach?

MikeJ

Where he ended up wasn't too far off a straight path from Panama to Martinique, but presumably he was there due to his announced intent to divert to Maiquetia (Caracas) when he first reported engine problems. The recent thread on the ATR in the sea off Italy contained a great deal of discussion on this issue. Chances of a casualty-free ditching are almost nil even under the most favourable of circumstances.

done some flying down there and although maracaibo is fine the surrounding area is simply jungle / mountains from memory. especially further south.

very hard to find a suitable flat area to glide into with an a/c that size. then once you're down youre only getting out by helo.

I'm not sure they could do that. The accident occurred around 02:00 AM LT and it was quite impossible to make a safe emergency landing on the sea using a rate of descent described above.
However some years ago a Varig B737-200 made an emergency landing after losing both engines during a night flight over the Amazon rainforest. Several people survived including all crew.

These vertical rates of descent seem to be quite high compared to a controlled glide of 1400 ft/min achieved by the Transat Glider (at no fuel weight).

http://www.pprune.org/forums/showthr...&pagenumber=10

Hi,

some usefull Infos about the accident:

http://www.rescate.com/HK-4374X.html

It´s in spanish language, but that´s what babelfish is for.

We all know how rare a dual engine failure on one aircraft is....... According to this article, the aircraft had just been equipped with a hushkit.

Plane Crash in Venezuela Leaves 160 Dead
By IAN JAMES, Associated Press Writer
1 hour ago


This is an undated file photo of David Muoz, ...
CARACAS, Venezuela - A plane carrying vacationers home to the French Caribbean island of Martinique crashed Tuesday in western Venezuela after reporting engine problems, killing all 160 people on board, officials said.

The McDonnell Douglas MD-82 was headed from Panama to Martinique when its pilot requested permission to make an emergency landing just after 3 a.m., saying there was trouble with both engines, said Col. Francisco Paz, president of the National Civil Aviation Institute.

Airport authorities lost radio contact with the West Caribbean Airways plane roughly 10 minutes later in the remote area of Machiques, near the border with Colombia some 400 miles west of Caracas, he said.

"The plane went out of control and crashed," said Paz said. "There are no survivors."

Rescue teams pulled dozens of bodies from the wreckage, which officials said was strewn across a forested area among farms. They also found one of the plane's black boxes, which could give clues about the crash, said Air Force Maj. Javier Perez, the search and rescue chief. He said the cockpit voice recorder had yet to be found.

The French civil aviation authority said all the passengers were French citizens from Martinique.

About 150 distraught friends and relatives, many crying, gathered in Martinique outside the city hall of Ducos, a town of 20,000 people where about 30 of the victims reportedly lived.

"The airplane should have landed early this morning. I heard on the radio it had crashed," said Claire Renette, 40, whose sister had been on the plane. "I don't understand. It's as though the sky fell on my head today."

Town officials brought in doctors and psychologists. Officials in Martinique said the vacationers included civil servants and their families who had chartered the flight for a one-week trip to Panama.

French President Jacques Chirac expressed his "strong emotion" as he learned of the "appalling catastrophe" and offered condolences to families of victims.

He sent France's minister for overseas territories to Martinique, and opened a crisis center at the Foreign Ministry to maintain contacts with Venezuelan authorities and victims' families.

The airline, in a statement from Colombia, said 152 passengers, including an infant, and eight Colombian crew members were aboard the plane. Venezuelan officials confirmed there were 160 aboard, including eight crew members.

The airline said the pilot reported an emergency 20 miles from the Colombia-Venezuela border. Authorities said the plane requested permission to attempt an emergency landing at the nearby airport in Maracaibo, Venezuela, but never made it.

It went down in a wooded area between two farms in the western state of Zulia, said German Bracho, the state's director of civil protection.

"Residents in the area said they heard an explosion," Paz said.

French Transport Minister Dominique Perben said West Caribbean Airways had operated a charter since spring between Panama and the French Caribbean departments of Martinique and Guadeloupe.

French aviation authorities checked the plane twice since May but found nothing unusual, he said. For this flight, the plane had been chartered by a Martinique travel agency, he said.

Peter Goelz, former managing director of the U.S. National Transportation Safety Board, said investigators would most likely look for evidence of fuel contamination.

"It's not unusual to lose one engine. It is unusual to lose both," Goelz said. "One of the first things you always look at is fuel contamination."

Goelz said he understood that both engines had recently had work done on them to suppress noise. Within the last few weeks, he said, hush kits _ noise-suppression devices _ were supplied to the engines.

The United States sent four investigators to Venezuela to help.

West Caribbean Airways, a Colombian airline, began service in 1998. In March, a twin-engine plane it operated crashed during takeoff from the Colombian island of Old Providence, killing eight people and injuring the other six passengers.

In the Colombian island of Old Providence, officials at the island's small airport announced the suspension Tuesday of all West Caribbean flights, without giving a reason.

Two dozen stranded passengers huddled around a television in Old Providence's palm-studded airport, watching news reports of the crash.

"I don't even want to fly on West Caribbean, even if they offer a flight," said Olmo Cardoso, a Colombian-Italian student visiting relatives on Old Providence. "Two crashes in such a short period is obviously too much. There's something wrong."

Two other airplane crashes in Venezuela in the past year both involved military planes. In December, a military plane crashed in a mountainous area near Caracas, killing all 16 people on board. In August 2004, a military plane crashed into a mountain in central Venezuela, killing 25 people.

Venezuela's last major civilian crash was in 2001, when an airplane from the Venezuelan airline Rutaca crashed in southern Venezuela, killing all 24 people on board and injuring three people on the ground.

Tuesday's crash came only two days after a Cypriot airliner plunged into the mountains north of Athens, Greece, killing all 121 people aboard.

BBC News article is reporting currently that the death total has risen to 160 on board (152 pax + 8 crew).

Article is viewable - here

Jordan

Write-thru from my MD-80 International Forum:

Posted at 16AUG05 2100Z. For updates, please click here

An MD-82 from Colombian carrier West Caribbean crashed at 03:30 (UTC 07:30) in remote western Venezuela with 152 passengers and eight Colombian crew aboard early Tuesday, an aviation official said. No one on the flight reportedly survived. All passengers were reported to be from French Martinique, which was the destination of the flight.

West Caribbean Airways flight WCW 708 had departed in Tocumen, Panama at 02:00 (06:00 UTC) with destination Fort de France, Martinique. Over western Venezuela the crew reported engine trouble to the air traffic control in Caracas, said Francisco Paz, president of the National Aviation Institute.

The MD-82 entered Venezolan airspace at 02:51 (06:51 UTC) at intersection SIDOS. Seven minutes later, at 02:58 (06:58 UTC) the flight requested descent from Caracas-Maiquetia from FL330 (33,000 ft) to FL140 (14,000 ft). Time was then 02:58 (06:58 UTC) and the aircraft's position was N 09°38'20"/W 72°48'28".

The aircraft was handed over to Maiquetia Center at FL310 and was lost from radar at 14,300 ft descending rapidly at 03:01 (07:01 UTC) in a steep descent of 7,000 ft/min, which is near triple the normal descent rate of an MD-80 at dual engine flame-out at high altitude. When lost from radar screen its position was N 09°43'00"/W 72°37'46".

The last radio transmission from the plane was at 03:02 (07:02 UTC) when the crew radioed that the aircraft was uncontrollable.

"Residents in the area said they heard an explosion," Paz said. The plane went down close to river Rio Tucuco, in the Cachaman area near a farm called La Cucharita.

The plane had been chartered for tourists, and 152 passengers were listed on the flight plan, Paz said. One of the passengers was a boy child.

The search and rescue helicopter teams left Maracaibo and Coquivacoa at dawn 06:30 (UTC 10:30) and arrived on the crash site (N 09°39' 69" W 72°36'40"), 7 hours after the crash, at 9:45 (UTC 13:45). The crash site was located 74 nm from Maracaibo and 24 nm from Machiques.

No survivors were found among the debris. The bodies are stored in a temporary morgue near the crash site, and will be helicoptered into Maracaibo, Venezuela. The two black boxes of the MD-82 have been found.

The aircraft had in use with U.S Continental Airlines until one month after 9-11, in 2001. After that it was in Mojave desert parking for three and a half years, until joining West Caribbean in January this year.

The crew was all-Colombian: Captain Omar Ospina; First Officer David Muñoz (age 21), Flight Attendants: Gustavo García, Angela Peña, Wilson Giovanni Fallaci and Alejandra Estrada. On board were also Mechanic Edgar Jérez and another employee of the airline John Jairo Buendía.

(compiled from Rescate.com, AP and other news sources).

Alaska Airlines Flight 261 fell 17,800 feet in 1mins 20secs...

so??
from memory this crash was due to a failed stab trim screwjack (due to no lubricating), so I fail to see a relation between the 2 accidents. Unless you are suggesting that the same thing happenned to the West Caribbean aircraft.

The aircraft [HK-4374X] was on a passenger flight from Panama City, Panama to Fort de France on the Caribbean Island of Martinique when the crew reported trouble with one of the MD-80's two engines to Venezuelan air traffic control. They announced intentions to divert to Caracas. Shortly thereafter, they reported that their other engine had failed. Initial reports suggest that the aircraft then began a rapid descent, crashing into mountainous terrain some 20 miles from the Colombian border with Venezuela:{

Hmmm. Starting to sound like rotor burst with hydro failure (tail section).

@jmc1980


Capt.KAOS was merely pointing out that 7000ft/min would not be unprecedented. I would suggest that your assumption that conclusions were being drawn as to the reasons behind this incident may be flawed.

Suggest before conclusions are drawn as to what happened, below is whats left, its not going to be a simple investigation, not that any investigation is simple.

:(

http://i22.photobucket.com/albums/b3...e/image002.jpg
http://i22.photobucket.com/albums/b3...e/image003.jpg
http://i22.photobucket.com/albums/b3...e/image004.jpg
http://i22.photobucket.com/albums/b3...e/image005.jpg
http://i22.photobucket.com/albums/b3...e/image006.jpg
http://i22.photobucket.com/albums/b3...e/image007.jpg

Whatever the rate of descent was at the beginning (could it have been for airspeed after the flameout?) it would seem from the photos that the aircraft landed flat, tail's intact. From the TV coverage I saw this evening, the crash site was adjacent to very flat, swampy land at which the guys may have been aiming. At two or three in the morning, pitch black, overcast, little moonlight, not much way of judging altitude or of knowing they'd hit just before a lightly wooded area. Pretty awful situation and the worst of luck.

The dilemma of running out of steam over unknown terrain in the dark was faced by a Varig crew in 1989. PP-VMK, a 737-200, exhausted their fuel after missing Belem and made a forced landing hundreds of miles away. Whether by sheer luck, the right size and consistency of the forest's trees or by skill in flaring at the right time, or a combination of all three, a fair number of people survived. Nearly all of the casualties were due to seats breaking loose and cascading forward during the crash; the hull was pretty much intact.

The dilemma of running out of steam over unknown terrain in the dark was faced by a Varig crew in 1989. PP-VMK, a 737-200, exhausted their fuel after missing Belem and made a forced landing hundreds of miles away. Whether by sheer luck, the right size and consistency of the forest's trees or by skill in flaring at the right time, or a combination of all three, a fair number of people survived. Nearly all of the casualties were due to seats breaking loose and cascading forward during the crash; the hull was pretty much intact.

Are those the guys that had their ADF's tuned up for the football match instead of navigating and got lost?

There is one obvious conclusion that comes from putting together the video report that is on the BBC web site report on the crash and the crash site pictures that are posted above.

In the BBC video report the General from the Venezuelan National Guard who describes the scene of the crash says that there was "no fire" at the site.

In the pictures provided by swh above, there is no obvious sign of any major fire.

In the BBC report, the graphic of the plane's flight path shows that it was only about one third of the way to its destination in Martinique when it crashed. It ought to have had enough fuel on board to have have made it the remaining two thirds of the way to its destination.

Why was there no fire when it crashed?

This plane ran out of fuel in mid-flight, it would seem.....