Cebu Pacific Flight 387 was a domestic flight from

Ninoy Aquino International Airport Ninoy Aquino International Airport (NAIA ; ; ), also known as Manila International Airport (MIA), is the main international airport serving Metro Manila in the Philippines. Located between the cities of Pasay and Parañaque, about south of ...

Metro Manila Metropolitan Manila ( ), commonly shortened to Metro Manila and formally the National Capital Region (NCR; ), is the capital region and largest List of metropolitan areas in the Philippines, metropolitan area of the Philippines. Located ...

to Lumbia Airport in

Cagayan de Oro Cagayan de Oro (abbreviated CDO and officially the City of Cagayan de Oro; ; Bukid language, Binukid: ''Ciudad ta Cagayan de Oro''; ; ) is a Cities of the Philippines#Legal classification, highly urbanized city in the Regions of the Philippi ...

. On February 2, 1998, the 30-year-old

McDonnell Douglas DC-9 The McDonnell Douglas DC-9 is an American five-abreast, single-aisle aircraft designed by the Douglas Aircraft Company. It was initially produced as the Douglas DC-9 prior to August 1967, after which point the company had merged with McDonnell ...

-32 crashed on the slopes of

Mount Sumagaya Mount Sumagaya is a mountain on the northern section of Mindanao in the Philippines. It is under the territorial jurisdiction of the municipality of Claveria, Misamis Oriental. It stands at a height of about . It is part of the Central Mindanao ...

in Claveria. All 104 people on board died in the crash. It is the second deadliest air disaster in the Philippines after Air Philippines Flight 541, which occurred two years later. The crash site is now a memorial, inaugurated on February 2, 2021, for the victims of the flight. The memorial is now part of a tourism complex in Misamis Oriental. The structure is tall.

Background

Aircraft

The aircraft involved in the accident was a

( registration number RP-C1507) and was delivered to

Air Canada Air Canada is the flag carrier and the largest airline of Canada, by size and passengers carried. Air Canada is headquartered in the borough of Saint-Laurent in the city of Montreal. The airline, founded in 1937, provides scheduled and cha ...

in September 1967 before acquired by

Cebu Pacific Cebu Air, Inc. (), operating as Cebu Pacific (stylized in lowercase), is a Philippine low-cost airline based in Pasay, Metro Manila. Founded in 1988, the airline was the first low-cost carrier in Asia and is also the largest airline in the Phi ...

in March 1997.

Passengers and crew

In command of the flight was Captain Paulo Justo. His co-pilot was First Officer Erwin Golla. There were five crew members and 94 Filipino passengers, including five children. One passenger each came from Australia, Austria, Canada, Japan, Switzerland, and the United States, totaling 104 passengers. The lone American passenger was a surgeon on a medical mission.

Accident

The plane left Manila at 01:00 GMT and was scheduled to arrive at 03:03 GMT in Cagayan de Oro. The plane made a stopover at

Tacloban Tacloban ( ; ), officially the City of Tacloban (; ), is a Cities of the Philippines#Legal classification, highly urbanized city on Leyte island in the Eastern Visayas region of the Philippines. According to the 2020 census, Tacloban has a popu ...

at 02:20 GMT, though sources differ about whether it was a scheduled or unscheduled stop. According to one source, the flight made an unscheduled stop at Tacloban to deliver a needed airplane tire for another Cebu Pacific aircraft in Tacloban. The last contact was 15 minutes before the plane was due to land, with the airport's ATC. In that transmission, the pilot said he was from the airport and was starting to descend. There was no indication that the plane was in trouble. The plane crashed away from the airport.

Cause

The cause of the crash is still a source of controversy in the Philippines. Colonel Jacinto Ligot was the chief of the

Philippine Air Force The Philippine Air Force (PAF) () is the aerial warfare service branch of the Armed Forces of the Philippines. Initially formed as part of the Philippine Army as the Philippine Army Air Corps (PAAC) in 1935, the PAAC eventually saw combat ...

rescue team, which faced difficulties due to the deep ravines and dense vegetation on the slopes of the mountain. The pilots were flying visually, not instrumentally, when the plane vanished from

radar Radar is a system that uses radio waves to determine the distance ('' ranging''), direction ( azimuth and elevation angles), and radial velocity of objects relative to the site. It is a radiodetermination method used to detect and track ...

. While the skies were clear at the airport, the mountains may have been covered by fog. Chief of Staff General Clemente Mariano speculated that the plane "almost cleared the top of the mountain, but it may have suffered a down-draft, causing it to hit the mountain." Jesus Dureza, the crisis manager during the rescue and retrieval operations, said he found out the Air Transportation Office maps used by the pilots listed the elevation of Mt. Sumagaya at above sea level, while the mountain actually is above sea level. This error might have misled the pilots to believe that they were clear of terrain, while in fact they were flying dangerously low. The ATO, on the other hand, pointed out in its official report deficiencies in the training of the pilots.

References

External links

* {{Portal, Philippines, 1990s, Aviation Airliner accidents and incidents caused by pilot error Aviation accidents and incidents in the Philippines Aviation accidents and incidents in 1998 Accidents and incidents involving the McDonnell Douglas DC-9 History of Misamis Oriental 1998 disasters in the Philippines Cebu Pacific February 1998 in Asia