TANS Peru 737 crashes, 58 walk away

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[ It just keeps on coming.. This one was ELV204. -Ed. ]

Dozens Walk Away From Peru Jet Crash

Aug 24, 8:18 PM (ET)

By RICK VECCHIO

PUCALLPA, Peru (AP) - Trudging through knee-deep mud in a hail storm,
at least 58 people managed to escape a flaming Peruvian airliner that
splintered as it crash-landed in the Amazon jungle, killing 37. One
aviation expert called it a "miracle" that so many walked away.

TANS airline said wind shear Tuesday afternoon may have forced the
pilot's emergency landing attempt, making TANS Peru Flight 204 the
world's fifth major airline accident this month and August the
deadliest month for airline disasters in three years.

The Boeing 737-200 was carrying 98 people, including six crew members,
on a domestic flight from the Peruvian capital of Lima to the Amazon
city of Pucallpa, company spokesman Jorge Belevan said Wednesday.

Belevan said three missing people might include survivors from Pucallpa
who returned to their homes after the crash without receiving medical
assistance.

Television images of the crash site showed mutilated bodies being
retrieved from a marsh near the Pucallpa airport where the pilot had
attempted an emergency landing. The fuselage was shattered and pieces
strewn along a 1,640-foot path made by the plane as it crash-landed.

"A plane is totally destroyed and more than 50 percent of the
passengers have survived," John Elliot, an experienced Peruvian pilot
and aviation expert, said in an interview with The Associated Press,
calling it "a miracle."

Leandro Vivas, 43, a Peruvian-American from the Brooklyn borough of New
York, survived the crash along with his three daughters, his brother
and his sister-in-law.

"We jumped out the plane and unfortunately we were thigh deep in the
marsh water. It was just mud," Vivas said Wednesday. "We had to
practically crawl out of there and try to get to some high ground."

In an interview with the AP in a restaurant alongside the Ucayali River
where his family was celebrating its good fortune, his brother, Gabriel
Vivas, said that he and another man saw a baby perhaps a year old
behind the plane when they got out.

"He picked up the baby and we tried to get to higher ground. He got
stuck in the mud and then I grabbed the baby. Then he jumped in front
of me to push away the thorns that were in our way. Between us, we got
the baby to higher ground with everybody else," he said.

Gabriel Vivas said he did know if the the baby's parents had survived
the crash but was told the baby had been brought to Lima and was alive.

Yuri Salas, 38, also walked to safety after crawling from the wreckage.

"I felt a strong impact and a light and fire and felt I was in the
middle of flames around the cabin, until I saw to my left a hole to
escape through," he said.

He said he heard another person shouting to him to keep advancing
because the plane was going to explode. "The fire was fierce despite
the storm," he said. "Hail was falling and the mud came up to my
knees."

The pilot began his approach to the airport in torrential rains and
strong winds, which passengers said began rocking the plane 10 minutes
before the scheduled landing Tuesday afternoon. Four miles from the
airstrip, he attempted to make an emergency landing, TANS said, after
wind shear apparently pushed his plane close to the ground.

The pilot apparently aimed for the marsh to soften the impact, but the
aircraft broke apart in the landing, strewing pieces of fuselage as it
skidded over the boggy ground.

Belevan credited the expertise of the pilots and insisted the plane did
not crash. "The plane made an emergency landing and the accident
occurred during the emergency landing," he said.

But Elliot and Victor Girao, a former president of Peru's Association
of Pilots, said the crash appeared to be due to pilot error. Elliot
said the pilot should have opted to avoid the storm and land at another
airport.

Both said the pilot was flying too close to the ground while making the
approach to the airport from four miles out, making it difficult to
control the aircraft against wind shear.


"They were coming in very low, looking for the airstrip," Girao said.

Search teams have recovered the plane's cockpit flight data recorder,
said Pablo Arevalo, a prosecutor in Pucallpa.

Belevan said there were 18 foreigners aboard the aircraft - 11
Americans, four Italians, one Colombian, one Australian and one from
Spain.

Among the dead were at least four foreigners - an American man and
woman, a Spanish woman and a Colombian woman, said Manuel Rodriguez
Rojas, an identification expert for the National Elections Board sent
to Pucallpa to help identify the dead. Police earlier listed an Italian
man as dead but did not mention a Spanish woman.

Rodriguez said the four foreigners were among seven reported missing.

He identified the Americans as Stephen Michael Lotti, 28, through his
boarding pass, and Sherra Young Gay through a visa card found on her
body. No home towns were available for either.

Many bodies could not immediately be identified.

Airline disasters this month have killed 331 people. The previous
deadliest month was May 2002, with three major crashes that killed at
least 485.

One common factor in several of the crashes was the weather, said Bill
Waldock, an aviation safety professor at Embry-Riddle Aeronautical
University in Arizona.

More plane crashes tend to happen in August, because thunderstorms -
especially dangerous to planes - are more frequent.

"It's one of those odd little blips. Quite a few accidents have
happened in August," he said, citing U.S. airline crashes in 1985, 1987
and 1988.

Last week, 160 people died when a Colombian-registered West Caribbean
charter went down in Venezuela. Two days earlier, 121 people died when
a Cyprus-registered Helios Airways Boeing plunged into the mountains
north of Athens.

Sixteen people were believed to have died Aug. 6 when a plane operated
by Tunisia's Tuninter crashed off Sicily. In Toronto, all 309 people
survived aboard an Air France Airbus A340 that overshot the runway on
Aug. 2.

In January 2003, a TANS twin engine Fokker 28 turbojet, plowed into a
11,550-foot high mountain in Peru's northern jungle, killing all 42
passengers and four crew members aboard.

BL.
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