Holiday jet crashes after engines fail, killing 160
http://www.timesonline.co.uk/article...738513,00.html
TIME of London ...By Tom Hennigan
Quote:
ALL 160 passengers and crew aboard a Colombian airliner were killed yesterday after it crashed in wooded mountains in Venezuela, the fourth commercial air crash this month.
The passengers were French citizens returning to the overseas territory of Martinique from holidays in Panama. Most were local government officials who had chartered the flight for a holiday with their families. Passengers included a baby and four children. The eight crew were Colombian.
Magalie Grivallier, a government spokeswoman, said Martinique, which has a population of 432,000, was so small that “virtually everybody had a cousin on that plane”.
The pilot of the twin-jet McDonnell Douglas MD82 belonging to West Caribbean Airways had radioed air-traffic controllers that his engines had failed and requested permission for an emergency landing. Radio contact was then lost.
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