Mexicana flight 940

Mexicana flight 940
	Identical 727-200 of the Mexicana
Accident summary
Accident type	Structural failure
place	Las Mesas , Mexico
date	March 31, 1986
Fatalities	167
Survivors	0
Aircraft
Aircraft type	Boeing 727-264
operator	Mexicana
Mark	XA-MEM
Surname	Veracruz
Departure airport	Mexico City Airport
1. Stopover	Puerto Vallarta International Airport
2. Stopover	Mazatlan Airport
Destination airport	Los Angeles International Airport
Passengers	159
crew	8th
	Lists of aviation accidents

The Mexicana flight 940 of March 31, 1986 is a flight operated with a Boeing 727 from Mexicana named Veracruz, which crashed on the flight from Mexico City to Puerto Vallarta . All 167 inmates were killed. It was the most momentous crash of both a Boeing 727 and the history of Mexico .

plane

The aircraft was an almost 5 year old Boeing 727-264 ( registration number : XA-MEM, serial number : 22414/1748), which was equipped with three Pratt & Whitney JTD8-17R engines and made its first flight on April 5, 1981 completed.

crew

In addition to the five flight attendants, the crew consisted of the 35-year-old captain Guadarrama Sixtos, who already had 15,000 hours and 14 years of experience and whose wife, daughter and son were also on board, the 34-year-old first officer Pillip Piaget L. Rohrer with 4 Years of experience and the 29-year-old flight engineer Ángel Carlos Peñasco Espinoza with 7 years of experience.

course

At 8:40 a.m., the Boeing 727 took off from Mexico City Airport for the flight to Puerto Vallarta International Airport . This was the first leg of flight MX940 between Mexico City and Los Angeles , with one stop each in Puerto Vallarta and Mazatlán . When the aircraft reached an altitude of 31,000 ft (9,450 m ), it was struck by an explosion caused by the bursting of an overheated tire. The hydraulics , electrical lines and fuel lines were destroyed, making the aircraft uncontrollable. An explosive decompression occurred and a fire broke out, causing smoke to penetrate the passenger cabin. In addition, parts of the slats of the left wing and the landing gear tore off. The crew declared the emergency and asked to return to Mexico City Airport. This prepared for an emergency landing , but the plane crashed at 9:11 a.m. in the mountains between the villages of Maravatio and El Oro at an altitude of 2,740 m. All 167 occupants were killed by the impact.

root cause

The investigation, carried out by the NTSB and the Mexican authorities, revealed that the tires were filled with air instead of nitrogen and that the tires had heated up due to a malfunction of the landing gear brakes. On the day of the accident, one of these tires burst and destroyed hydraulics , electrical conductors and fuel lines in the explosion , causing the plane to fall out of control into the mountains. The ground crew waiting for the 727 were held responsible for this mistake.

Four days after the accident, two terrorist organizations from the Middle East confessed to an attack by a suicide bomber who, according to an anonymous letter, was directed against the United States . The reason was the confrontations in Libya a week earlier. At that time, the attack on the La Belle discotheque in Berlin was only hours away. However, this alleged bomb attack was soon ruled out as the cause of the crash.