Lima, Peru – Rescuers combed a jungle marsh Wednesday for victims of a Peruvian airliner that split in two after an emergency landing during a fierce hailstorm, killing at least 41 people, while 57 survived the burning wreckage by wading away through knee-deep mud.
TANS Peru Flight 204 was the world’s fifth major airline accident in August, making it the deadliest month for plane disasters in three years.
The Boeing 737-200 was carrying an estimated 100 people on a domestic flight from the Peruvian capital of Lima to the Amazon city of Pucallpa.
In strong winds and torrential rains, the pilot circled the airport and then tried to make an emergency landing about 20 miles from the destination.
He aimed for the marsh to soften the impact, but the landing split the aircraft, said Edwin Vasquez, president of the Ucayali region where the city is located.
Wind shear – a potentially dangerous sudden change in wind speed or direction, often during a thunderstorm – possibly pushed the plane down as the pilot was landing, said TANS spokesman Jorge Belevan. He said there did not appear to have been a technical failure in the 22-year-old aircraft.
Search teams have recovered the plane’s cockpit voice recorder, said Pablo Arevalo, a prosecutor in the jungle city of Pucallpa.
He also said that 57 people had survived the crash.
The airline initially said the flight was carrying 92 passengers and eight crew members.
Police Lt. David Mori said 41 bodies had been recovered, 56 survivors were being treated at hospitals and three people were still missing.
Airline officials could not be reached to confirm whether anyone was missing. Rescue efforts late Tuesday were suspended until the morning because of darkness and bad weather.
Among the dead were three foreigners – an American woman, an Italian man and a Colombian woman, Mori said. Many of the bodies could not be identified because of their condition.
In Lima, relatives of passengers and crew were at the airport trying to get on a special flight to Pucallpa, but not all were allowed to board.
Jose Reyna, 30, said he had come with three siblings to say farewell to their father, Jose Lino Reyna, 57, a medical technician killed in the crash. Only one of his brothers got on the plane.
“My father died and they have identified him. They recognized him by his clothes and his cellphone,” Reyna said.
