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
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
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
Other websites
- 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.
