LAC Colombia Flight 028

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LAC Colombia Flight 028
Douglas DC-8-54 (F), LAC - Lineas Aereas del Caribe Colombia AN0264397.jpg

A similar DC-8 from LAC Colombia
Accident summary
Accident type Stall after engine shutdown
place Mariano Roque Alonso , ParaguayParaguayParaguay 
date 4th February 1996
Fatalities 4th
Survivors 0
Fatalities on the ground 18th
Aircraft
Aircraft type United StatesUnited States Douglas DC-8-55F
operator ColombiaColombia LAC Colombia
Mark ColombiaColombia HK-3979X
Departure airport Asunción Airport , Paraguay
ParaguayParaguay 
Destination airport Viracopos Airport , Brazil
Brazil 1960Brazil 
Passengers 1
crew 3
Lists of aviation accidents

On February 4, 1996, on LAC Colombia flight 028 (flight number: ALA028 ), a Douglas DC-8-55F of LAC Colombia crashed onto a field shortly after taking off from Asunción Airport . In the accident, all 4 occupants of the machine and 18 people on the ground were killed. It is the most serious aircraft accident in Paraguay.

plane

The unlucky machine in November 1982 at the Aeronaves del Peru

The aircraft involved in the accident was a Douglas DC-8-55CF Jet Trader, which was 29 years and 5 months old at the time of the accident. The machine was assembled at the Douglas factory in Long Beach , California , its maiden flight took place on September 12, 1966. The aircraft had the factory number 45882, it was the 282nd Douglas DC-8 from ongoing production. The DC-8 was delivered new to Japan Air Lines with the aircraft registration JA8018 , where it was given the name Ise . The airline used the machine until 1980. The aircraft was then converted into a freighter and flew from October 15, 1980 with the new registration number OB-R-1200 and the name Santa Rita for the Aeronaves del Perú . From August 16, 1988 the machine with the US registration N7105Q was operated by Palau International Traders Inc. , before it was sold to the International Airlines Holding Group in August 1992 . From February 28, 1993, the new owner leased the aircraft with the aircraft registration HR-AMU from Honduras to LAC Colombia for the first time . In November 1994, TCB - Transportes Charter do Brasil, took over the machine as owner and lessor, and leased it to LAC Colombia with the new aircraft registration number HK-3979X . From April 26, 1995 the machine was approved for the LAC Colombia itself and was operated by it. The four-engine long-range - narrow-body aircraft was equipped with four engines of the type Pratt & Whitney Jt3d-3B equipped. By the time of the accident, the machine had completed 66,326 operating hours in 20,567 take-offs and landings.

Flight plan

The machine was on a positioning flight from their location at the airport Asuncion to Viracopos airport . It was therefore flown in empty flight with a three-person crew and one passenger.

Inmates

There was a three-person cockpit crew on board, consisting of a flight captain, a first officer and a flight engineer.

The captain of the flight, José Hernando Muñoz Ruiz, had 9,100 hours of flight experience, including 5919 hours in the cockpit of the Douglas DC-8. The first officer José Antonio Karpf had a cumulative flight experience of 3500 hours, of which he had completed 3158 hours in the cockpit of the Douglas DC-8. The flight engineer Hernando Sánchez López was licensed in addition to the Douglas DC-8 for the aircraft types Lockheed L-188 Electra , Douglas DC-6 , Boeing 707 , Boeing 720 and Airbus A300 . Of his 14,120 flight hours, he had completed 6060 on board the Douglas DC-8.

the accident

The machine took off from runway 02 at Asunción Airport on an empty flight. The take-off run went normally. When reaching take-off speed, the crew reduced the thrust of engine no. 1. Immediately after the rotation , the power of engine no. 2 was also throttled. While the landing gear was still extended and the buoyancy aids were still in the 15 degree take-off configuration, the machine began to lose altitude. The machine stalled and fell two kilometers past the airport on a playing field in the Mariano Roque Alonso district , where there were many people at the time. The DC-8 broke apart on impact and caught fire.

Victim

In the accident, all four occupants died on the floor of the machine and 18 people died on the floor. The occupants of the machine were all Colombian and most of the victims on the ground were Paraguayan . One victim came from Brazil. A three-month-old baby was also among the victims.

root cause

During the investigation into the accident, it was first noticed that the debris field from the machine was very small. Despite the size of the type of aircraft involved in the accident, it barely extended beyond the playing field. Since no grinding marks were found on the ground, the investigators assumed that the aircraft had barely any horizontal speed on impact.

The evaluation of the cockpit voice recorder led the investigators to the conclusion that the aircraft's crew had improperly used the positioning flight to conduct a test flight with a simulated engine failure. On the recordings you could hear the pilots taking the liberty of joking and deactivating one engine and then another in order to test the ability of the pilot on board to react to abnormal flight situations. This ultimately led to a stall and crash.

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