TANS Perú Flight 204
TANS Perú Flight 204 was a flight that crashed on August 23, 2005 near the Peruvian city of Pucallpa. 40 of the 98 people on board were killed.
 OB-1809-P, the aircraft involved, photographed 3 weeks before the crash. | |
| Accident | |
|---|---|
| Date | 23 August 2005 |
| Summary | Controlled flight into terrain[1] due to pilot error in bad weather |
| Site | Pucallpa, Peru 8°25′0″S 74°35′45″W / 8.41667°S 74.59583°W[2]: 6 |
| Aircraft | |
| Aircraft type | Boeing 737-244 Advanced |
| Operator | TANS Perú |
| IATA flight No. | TJ204 |
| ICAO flight No. | ELV204 |
| Call sign | Aereos Selva 204 |
| Registration | OB-1809-P |
| Flight origin | Jorge Chávez Int'l Airport Lima, Peru |
| Stopover | Captain Rolden Int'l Airport Pucallpa, Peru |
| Destination | Crnl. FAP F. S. Vignetta Int'l Airport Iquitos, Peru |
| Occupants | 98 |
| Passengers | 91 |
| Crew | 7 |
| Fatalities | 40 |
| Survivors | 58 |
The accident was the fifth most serious in August 2005, a dark month for commercial aviation, which also included, among others, the tragedies of Helios Airways Flight 522 and West Caribbean Flight 708.
Accident[change | change source]
Flight 204, carried out in a Boeing 737, left Lima's Jorge Chávez International Airport at 2:24 p.m. for a 53-minute flight to Pucallpa. At 14:52, the crew began the descent to the Pucallpa airport.
At that time, the weather conditions began to worsen, preventing a visual approach from being made. Conditions continued to worsen, however the pilots continued with the maneuver. Suddenly the plane entered a heavy hailstorm that caused the pilots to lose situational awareness and fail to abort the maneuver.
The plane finally crashed and split in two in the middle of the jungle at 15:09, just 5 kilometers from the airport.
40 of the people on the plane died. On board the aircraft were 73 Peruvians, 11 Americans, 4 Italians, 2 Brazilians, 1 Colombian, 1 Spanish and 1 Australian.
In television[change | change source]
Flight 204 has been the subject of a Reader's Digest story and an MSNBC documentary.[3][4] The Canadian TV series, Air Crash Investigation, has also produced an episode about the accident named "Lack of Vision".[5]
References[change | change source]
- ↑ Accident description at the Aviation Safety Network. Retrieved on 16 December 2011.
- ↑ "OB-1809P Final Report" (PDF) (in Spanish). July 2006. p. 68. Archived from the original (PDF) on 26 May 2012. Retrieved 16 December 2011.
- ↑ Corderi, Victoria (30 September 2005). "Escape from flight 204". NBC News.
- ↑ Rosellini, Lynn (January 2007). "Jet Crash in the Jungle". Reader's Digest. Archived from the original on 17 November 2007.
- ↑ "Mayday Season 12, Episode 5: Lack of Vision". Archived from the original on 27 June 2014.
Investigators face a major challenge when looters make off with the Flight Data Recorder from the crash of TANS Peru Flight 204. Wreckage allows investigators to rule out engine failure. But with no FDR, it will take all their ingenuity to reconstruct the final moments of the flight and figure out why the 737 crashed into the jungle, just 4 kilometers short of the runway.
Other websites[change | change source]
- Final report (in Spanish)
- "In pictures: Peru plane crash". BBC News. 24 August 2005. Archived from the original on 27 June 2014.
- Salazar, Carla (24 August 2005). "Dozens Killed in Crash of Airliner in Peru Jungle". The Washington Post. Associated Press. Archived from the original on 27 June 2014.