Roanoke Times
Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: SUNDAY, June 19, 1994 TAG: 9406190097
SECTION: NATIONAL/INTERNATIONAL PAGE: A2 EDITION: METRO
SOURCE: The Washington Post
DATELINE: WASHINGTON LENGTH: Medium
Only the Lear jet's tail - on which a Mexican flag had been painted - came through the crash intact, and wreckage was scattered over a quarter-mile at the airport's southeastern boundary along Virginia 28. Under a scorching sun, it took rescuers eight hours to bulldoze through the trees to begin retrieving the bodies.
Officials said the dead, who included two families, a pilot and co-pilot, were flying in for today's World Cup match between Mexico and Norway at Robert F. Kennedy Stadium. Planners expect more than 3,000 fans to come from Mexico for the game.
The 2-year-old chartered plane was owned by TAESA, Mexico's third-largest commercial airline and the official airline of the Mexican soccer team. It left Mexico City on Friday night and made two stops before landing in New Orleans, where it was refueled as passengers passed through U.S. customs.
The jet arrived at Dulles about 6 a.m. and apparently was put in a holding pattern for 20 minutes. The pilot approached the runway from the south but aborted his landing for unknown reasons. As he made a second pass, the plane suddenly dropped out of the sky, clipped some trees and crashed a quarter-mile south of the runway, officials said.
"The impact area is relatively small," said National Transportation Safety Board Chairman Carl Vogt, whose agency is investigating the accident. "It appears to have come in at a relatively steep angle of impact."
At an afternoon news conference held from the back of a utility truck inside airport property, NTSB officials offered few details on the crash, although they acknowledged that the fog could have been a factor. Visibility was only half a mile at the time, and the pilot was relying on instruments for landing.
Vogt would not explain why the plane was asked to hold, nor would he answer questions about whether it had run low on fuel.
He said there was no indication that language difficulty played a part. In 1990, miscommunication between a pilot and the control tower contributed to a crash of an Avianca plane in New York that killed 73 people.
The dead in Saturday's crash included Alejandro Garcia Velasco, 40; his wife, Vivian Crespo Huerta, 40; and their three children, Vivian, 13, Priscilla, 10, and Alejandro, 6.
The other passengers were Luis Garza Hernandez, 36; his wife, Margarita Rodriguez de la Garza, 34; and their children, Luis, 9, and Alejandro, 5. A tenth passenger was identified as Luis Diaz Barreiro Castillo, 17. The crew included pilot Ricardo Hoyos, 27, and co-pilot Alfredo Angeles, 25.
Keywords:
FATALITY
by CNB