Bolivian Plane Crash

[sky's the limit]

Bolivian jet makes crash landing in forest

* Story Highlights
* Charter jet flown by airline Lloyd Aereo Boliviano makes emergency landing
* Airline official says no one was killed, but news reports say several injured
* Plane loses power a few miles short of runway in Trinidad, Bolivia
* Plane heads to Trinidad after storms forced it to turn away from original destination




TRINIDAD, Bolivia (AP) -- A charter jet flown by airline Lloyd Aereo Boliviano was forced to make an emergency landing Friday in a flooded forest outside the eastern lowland city of Trinidad.

No one was killed, according to the airline's regional manager in Trinidad, Patricia Aruz. But local news media said several passengers were taken to a nearby hospital for injuries.

Survivors interviewed by radio stations said the plane first lost power and suffered serious damage when it landed.

"We noticed the engines went out, and there was this calm," said Paolo Bravo, a Bolivian senator who survived the crash, in an interview with the radio network Erbol.

"Then they told us, 'Crash positions! crash positions!' and it was just another two or three seconds before we hit ...

"The plane fell, the wings broke off, but the fuselage was OK," he said.

The plane was turned away by fierce storms at its destination -- the northern city of Cobija -- and then headed south to Trinidad, some 370 miles away. The plane then lost power a few miles short of the runway.

LAB, Bolivia's former state airline, was privatized in 1996 but has been in and out of bankruptcy in recent years. The company runs a skeleton fleet of only a handful of planes on a charter basis only.


http://edition.cnn.com/2008/WORLD/ameri ... index.html



stl

[flyincanuck]

yikes!



''

[sky's the limit]

Yikes is right... Glad they walked away.

stl

[Flying Nutcracker]

I smell fumes...

[linecrew]

I wonder how they put it down in such a way that the fuselage is still pretty much intact.

[C-GPFG]

No fuel to start the post crash fire that would consume the fuselage?

[linecrew]

No fuel to start the post crash fire that would consume the fuselage?

True but throw a 727-200 weighing over 100,000 lbs (zero fuel weight) into the dense jungle with no runway in site at best glide speed which must be close to 200kts, and I would think that there would be not much left even without a post crash fire. In this case the plane stayed mostly intact and everyone survived the impact forces!

Perhaps they landed on a slope or the treetops cushioned the landing.

Pretty lucky for the pax no matter how you look at it and the crew survived to be praised and/or punished accordingly depending on the results of the investigation.