Charter airline faces scrutiny after Martinique-bound plane crash

Rescuers search amid the wreckage of a Colombian
West Caribbean plane that crashed early in the
morning in the mountains of western Venezuela
killing all 160 people on board 16 August, 2005.
AFP PHOTO/Diario PANORAMA VENEZUELA OUT

The tail of the Colombian West Caribbean Airways
plane 17 August 2005 in the site where the plane
crashed Tuesday morning.
AFP PHOTO/Andrew ALVAREZ

Family members of victims of the West Caribbean
Airways plane crash are comforted by security
personnel in Ducos 17 August 2005. AFP PHOTO

by Alexandre Peyrille

Thursday, August 18, 2005

MACHIQUES, Venezuela (AFP): Investigators searched Wednesday amid corpses rotting in the tropical heat and debris sunk in knee-deep mud for clues to the cause of crash by a Colombian airliner bound for the Caribbean island of Martinique, which killed all 160 people on board.

Much attention focused on West Caribbean Airways, the Colombian airline which chartered the plane used to take 152 French tourists from Panama back home to Martinique.

The airline said Wednesday it was indefinitely suspending all flights following its second deadly crash in five months.

A dozen forensic experts worked through the night, taking fingerprints from badly charred bodies at a morgue set up in the Venezuelan city of Maracaibo, in a bid to identify the victims.

Officials said about 90 percent of the bodies of the French tourists and eight Colombian crew had been found and moved to Maracaibo. But the bad state of the bodies would delay the identification, they said.

Experts and searchers at the scene, a marshy slope near the town of Machiques, close to the Sierra de Perija mountains, had to wear masks because of the stench of the remaining bodies. Red Cross workers offered vaccinations against disease to those taking part in the operation.

Civil protection chief Antonio Rivero said the second of two black box flight recorders had been found. The first was recovered on Monday.

The plane crashed after the pilot reported problems with both engines on the McDonnell-Douglas MD-82 jet.

Venezuelan Interior Minister Jesse Chacon said the pilot had requested permission to make an emergency landing in Venezuela. He said the plane "started to fall at a speed of 7,000 feet (2,100 meters) a minute."

The island of Martinique was devastated by Tuesday's crash, which left the highest French toll ever in an aviation disaster.

The passengers on the plane were a mixture of government employees, pensioners and workers from private companies who had booked a week-long holiday in Panama, a favored destination as many people from Martinique helped build the Panama Canal in the late 1800s.

Dozens of relatives flocked to Lamentin airport near Martinique's capital, Fort-de-France. The names of the dead were put on lists displayed at the airport. In Paris, a memorial service was held at Notre Dame cathedral.

The crash killed entire families, according to French officials, who were organizing flights to get relatives to Maracaibo. French officials also confirmed they would send a specialist to help identify human remains along with a team of crash investigators.

There were to have been 153 passengers on the ill-fated flight, but Gertrude Romain, a retired teacher, missed the holiday to look after her son, who had fallen ill.

"This morning, my husband was saying that our friends would be able to give us their impressions of the trip. Then we heard the news," said Romain, who regularly goes on holiday with a group of former schoolmates.

"I'm devastated," she said.

The Colombian Association of Civilian Air Pilots said it had repeatedly complained to authorities about West Caribbean before the crash.

El Tiempo newspaper, citing West Caribbean employees, reported that the airline had failed to pay salaries to pilots and forced them to work extra hours in violation of safety rules.

Colombian President Alvaro Uribe called a meeting with civil aviation officials to determine if authorities had thoroughly checked West Caribbean planes.

In March, a West Caribbean Airways Let-410 plane crashed minutes after takeoff from the Colombian island of Providencia, killing two crew members and six of its 12 passengers. That crash is still under investigation.

In July, West Caribbean suspended flights for a week after US aircraft maker Boeing, which took over McDonnell-Douglas in 1997, asked the airline to conduct maintenance work on its fleet, a Colombian civil aviation official said.

Reports filed in Bogota last month showed that the carrier, which has a subsidiary in Costa Rica, had accumulated a debt of six million dollars.

West Caribbean Airways began as a charter airline but was bought by a group of Colombian businessmen in 2000 and re-launched as a low-cost carrier based in Medellin.

It was the fourth plane crash in the world in the last two weeks. A Cypriot plane crashed Sunday near Athens, killing all 121 people on board; a Tunisian-chartered plane crashed into the sea off Sicily on August 6, killing 16 people; and an Air France jet crash landed in Toronto on August 2 but all 309 passengers and crew survived.

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