Cuban airliner crashes on takeoff in Ecuador

From Herald Wire Services

QUITO, Ecuador -- A Cubana Airlines jet crashed while taking off from Quito's mountain-ringed airport Saturday, killing at least 76 people and sending flaming debris into a nearby neighborhood.

Gen. Osvaldo Dominguez, director of the Civil Aviation Office, said 90 people were aboard the Russian-made Tupolev-154 -- 76 passengers and 14 crew members. He said at least 19 foreigners were killed, including Cubans, Chileans, Italians, Spaniards, one Argentine and one Jamaican.

There were no reports of Americans among the dead. The plane was heading to Guayaquil, on the Ecuadorean coast, and then on to Havana.

Red Cross official Galo Leoro said the jetliner had just started taking off from Quito's Mariscal Sucre International Airport when at least one engine apparently failed and the aircraft crashed several hundred yards beyond the end of the runway.

Witnesses said the plane lost altitude and clipped the top of an auto mechanic's shop beyond the end of the runway before plowing into a soccer field.

The fuselage burst into flames and was destroyed on impact, with flaming debris scattered over a wide area. The plane barely missed a heavily traveled avenue at the end of the runway in a middle-class residential neighborhood.

Red Cross workers in red uniforms dug through the charred wreckage for survivors, while firefighters sprayed jets of water onto the smoking ruins to prevent further explosions.

Local radio and television stations reported that four people died when the plane struck the mechanic's shop and at least five survivors were pulled from the plane's wreckage but neither report could be confirmed.

``There must be many dead, but there are also survivors. I pulled one person out alive,'' said civil defense volunteer Hugo Albuja.

Quito's Channel 10 television interviewed Cuban survivor Hernan Boada, who suffered a broken ankle.

Craft struggled for altitude

Boada said the plane struggled to gain altitude, rising only a few yards before crashing into a wall near the end of the runway.

``It felt like the plane was rising and suddenly it crashed into a wall and burst into flames,'' he told a television interviewer from an ambulance.

``There were three explosions,'' Boada said. ``I saw other people wrapped in flames jump from the plane. I don't know how I survived.''

Boada said he leapt out through a gaping hole in the fuselage and ``people nearby, in a soccer field, helped me get away from the plane, fearing explosions.'' Boada said he feared that his mother, who was traveling with him, had died in the crash.

Other witnesses said the plane burst into a ball of fire, creating a huge plume of smoke at the site.

Civil aviation officials did not specify whether the death toll included people killed on the ground. One woman said three of her children, who were playing near the crash site, were missing.

All flights suspended

Officials of the Cuban airline identified the pilot as Mario Ramos and the copilot as Leonardo Diaz. It was not known if any of the crew were among the survivors.

All flights at the airport were suspended after the crash and the area was cordoned off for investigators and rescue crews.

Quito hospitals went on emergency status. Hospital officials said 25 people injured in the crash were being treated, but it was not immediately clear if they had been aboard the plane or on the ground.

President Jamil Mahuad went to the crash site and told reporters he was asking investigators to complete studies as soon as possible for building an airport outside the capital.

Quito lies in a hollow at an altitude of 9,300 feet, surrounded by Andean peaks that include the 15,423-foot Pichincha Volcano.

The current airport is in the middle of the city, surrounded by populous middle-class neighborhoods, and people have often complained about the noise and the possibility of accidents.

Similar accidents

Mariscal Sucre Airport was the site of a similar accident in 1984. An Ecuadorean cargo plane slammed into a neighborhood beyond the end of the runway after failing to gain altitude, killing 65 people.

In 1996, a Brazilian FLY airlines plane carrying a Brazilian soccer team crashed into some airport walls after one of the jet turbines flamed out and the crew aborted the takeoff. One player was slightly injured.

The Cubana plane used the same takeoff route as those two planes, which both fell in roughly the same spot as the Cubana plane.

In another serious crash in Ecuador, a commercial cargo plane went down in October 1996 in a neighborhood in Manta, 160 miles southwest of Quito. Thirty people died, including the crew of three and 27 people on the ground.

In a recent air tragedy involving a Cuban plane, all 44 people aboard a Cubana Airlines plane died in July 1997 when it slammed into the sea after takeoff from Santiago de Cuba.