A jetliner originating from Los Angeles overshot a runway and raced onto a busy street in the Honduran capital today, killing the pilot, two passengers and a motorist on the ground. At least 65 people were injured.
The Grupo Taca Airbus A320 with 140 people on board ended with its nosed smashed against a roadside embankment and its fuselage buckled and broken in places. Authorities frantically hosed down cars trapped beneath the wreckage as thousands of gallons of fuel gushed from the jet.
Rescuers tore open part of the wreckage to get the pilot and co-pilot out, but the pilot didn't survive, said Cesar Villalta, director of Honduras' military hospital.
Passenger Harry Brautigam, a Nicaraguan who headed a regional development bank, died of heart failure. The body of a man trapped under the wreckage was believed to be a taxi driver.
Janneth Shantall, the wife of Brazilian Ambassador Brian Michael Fraser Neele, was also killed in the crash. The former head of Honduras' armed forces, Gen Daniel Lopez Carballo, was also among the injured.
A statement from the office of President Manuel Zelaya said the flight originated in Los Angeles, with a stop in San Salvador before arriving in Honduras' capital, Tegucigalpa. Most of the passengers were from Honduras, El Salvador and Costa Rica.
Following the crash, officials acknowledged that the runways of Tegucigalpa's aging Toncontin International Airport are short and its approach paths are dangerous. The airport is ringed by hills, posing a special challenge for pilots.
There was no official cause given for the crash, but weather may have also been a factor. The runway was wet with rain from Tropical Storm Alma.
"The plane inexplicably circled the city twice and it ran out of runway because it landed more than halfway down" the length of the strip, airport manager Carlos Ramos told the Channel 7 television network.
The plane "didn't touch down were they normally do, at the start of the runway ... and that is being investigated," Ramos said.
Many passengers walked away from the accident.
Mirtila Lopez, 71, said she was talking to another passenger when the plane "left the runway, hit electric cables from a nearby street and then got stuck in the side of a small ravine." Following the crash, Honduran air officials said they would close the terminal to large jets and permanently transfer those flights to the former military airfield at Palmerola.
Larger jets will now operate out of the Palmerola airport, also known as the Soto Cano base, about 45km north of the capital.
Used by the United States during the Central American civil wars of the 1980s, Palmerola has the best runway in the country at 2700m long and 50m wide and is used most for drug surveillance planes.
There have been calls for years to replace the aging Toncontin airport, whose short runway, primitive navigation equipment and neighbouring hills make it one of the world's more dangerous international airports.
The airport was built in 1948 with a runway less than 1600m long - shorter than that of a small field such as Municipal Airport in Goldsboro, North Carolina.
The altitude of some 1000m forces pilots to use more runway on landings and takeoffs than they would at sea level. And because of the hills, pilots have to make an unusually steep approach.
In 1997, a US Air Force C-130 cargo plane overshot the runway at Toncontin and rolled 180m before bursting into flames on a major boulevard, killing three people aboard.
The worst crash associated with the airport came in 1989 when a Honduran airliner hit a nearby hill, killing 133 people.
AP pjg
