ROANOKE TIMES 

                         Roanoke Times
                 Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.

DATE: THURSDAY, February 21, 1991                   TAG: 9102210097
SECTION: NATL/INTL                    PAGE: C6   EDITION: METRO 
SOURCE: Associated Press
DATELINE: SANTIAGO, CHILE                                LENGTH: Medium

CHILEAN PLANE CRASHES; 19 DEAD

A chartered Chilean airliner carrying 72 people, mostly American tourists en route to Antarctica, crashed into a freezing channel Wednesday near the southern tip of Chile, the airline said. Authorities said 19 passengers died.

Seventeen of the 53 survivors from the British-made BAE-146 airplane were injured in the early afternoon accident, said a spokesman for the Chilean airline LAN.

The plane crashed in the Beagle Channel as it attempted to land in light rain at Puerto Williams, on Navarino Island, 1,500 miles south of Santiago, said the LAN spokesman.

"The airplane went beyond the end of the landing strip, and fell into the water," according to a LAN statement.

The airline said the cause of the accident was not immediately known.

The names of the passengers - all foreigners and mostly Americans, according to tour officials - were not immediately released.

LAN President Jose Luis Moure said all seven crew members - two pilots, four flight attendants and a mechanic - survived.

The airline said the plane was en route from Punta Arenas, 300 miles to the north.

The tourists planned to board the ship Society Explorer in Puerto Williams to be ferried to Antarctica for tourism, said Miguel Rivero, manager of the travel agency that chartered the plane. The nearest Antarctic point is about 1,000 miles south of Puerto Williams.

Rivero said this is the first accident in the agency's five-year history.

The remote area in southernmost Chile is attractive to tourists because of its deep fjord-like channels and ice floes.

Puerto Williams is an important naval base, located across the Beagle Channel from Argentina. Chile and Argentina have a long-running border dispute over the waterway, located about 100 miles north of the Cape Horn.

About 800 American tourists traveled to Antarctica in 1988, and tour operators expect at least 4,000 in the three-month summer season ending this month. The trips normally cost several thousand dollars.

Although 16 nations fly flags in Antarctica and seven claim slices of it, no nation holds title to the continent, which is larger than the United States and Mexico combined.

Keywords:
FATALITY 


 by CNB