Faucett Perú Flight 251

Faucett Perú Flight 251 was a scheduled domestic flight from Lima to Tacna, with a stopover in Arequipa. On 29 February 1996, while completing the first leg, the Boeing 737-200 operating the route crashed on approach to Rodríguez Ballón International Airport. All 123 passengers and crew aboard the aircraft lost their lives in the accident. It is the deadliest aviation accident to occur on Peruvian soil.

Aircraft and crew

The aircraft involved in the accident was a Boeing 737-222, tail number OB-1451, c/n 19072, that had its maiden flight on 21 October 1968. Equipped with Pratt & Whitney JT8D-7B engines, the airplane started its commercial career on 28 October 1968, when it was delivered new to United Airlines and registered N9034U.

It was re-registered N73714 on 14 June 1971 when Aloha Airlines took possession of the airplane until late , when it was transferred to Air California with the same registration. Air California was rebranded AirCal in , and the aircraft was re-registered again to N459AC. Following the absorption of AirCal into American Airlines, the airplane continued its career with this carrier until Braniff Inc. received it, with the same registration, on 2 March 1989, later going to AL AC 2 Corp, on 15 May 1990.

Finally, the aircraft was delivered to Faucett on 15 July 1991, and registered OB-1451. The airframe was old at the time of the accident. On its final flight, it was piloted by Captain Juan Mayta Basurto and First Officer Julio Paz Castillo; both pilots were qualified to fly the 737.

Description

Inbound from Jorge Chávez International Airport, the aircraft was on a VOR/DME approach to Rodríguez Ballón International Airport's runway 09, at night, in rain and mist, with thunderstorms reported in the area.

The flight crew asked for the lights of the runway to be brightened as they could not see them when they should on normal approach, receiving a response from air traffic controllers that they were at full intensity. The airplane crashed into hills at —the airport elevation is Data current as of October 2006.—, at 20:25, approximately short of the runway and off Arequipa. The aft section broke off on impact, and the main fuselage section continued to fly past the initial ridge and impacted near the top of the second one. The tail section fell into a crevasse between the two ridges.

There were 123 people aboard the aircraft, of whom 117 were passengers. The nationalities of the victims were as follows:

Among those killed was Juan Lorenzo de Szyszlo, a dual American-Peruvian citizen aged 36, who was the second son of renowned Peruvian painter Fernando de Szyszlo and his wife, the poet Blanca Varela. Lorenzo was reportedly heading to Arequipa to oversee an exhibition of his father's work there.

Investigation

The investigation was assisted by representatives from the US National Transportation Safety Board (NTSB) and Federal Aviation Administration, as well as Boeing and Pratt & Whitney, all of whom arrived at the scene of the crash by 1 March. The aircraft's flight data recorder (FDR) and cockpit voice recorder (CVR) were retrieved from the wreckage and on 5 March were sent to Washington D.C. for analysis by the NTSB.

Early press coverage reported that the FDR and CVR were already yielding information. However, while the FDR was found to be usable, the partly-burned and partly-damaged CVR had its magnetic tape broken at its beginning, and only isolated Spanish-language voices could be heard. These were seemingly recorded inside a hangar, possibly during maintenance, and thus no recording of the flight crew's final voices before the crash was made. The airline claimed to have acquired the CVR in July 1995 and to have done maintenance on it on two occasions immediately prior to the crash (December 1995 and February 1996), however, the CVR had not been maintained in six years, showing in its interior registry that the date of its last opening was December 1989.

It was found that the crew had been issued an outdated barometric altimeter setting after bypassing an ILS signal, causing them to fly almost lower than the altitude they believed they were flying at. In fact, they had the wrong impression the aircraft was flying at , when it actually was at , some below the glideslope.

See also

* List of accidents and incidents involving commercial aircraft
* List of unrecovered and unusable flight recorders
* TAME Flight 173 - A similar accident occurred in nearby Ecuador more than a decade earlier and also the worst aerial crash in that country's history.

Notes

References

Further reading

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{{Aviation incidents and accidents in 1996

Faucett 251
Airliner accidents and incidents involving controlled flight into terrain
Aviation accidents and incidents in 1996
Aviation accidents and incidents in Peru
Faucett Perú accidents and incidents
1996 in Peru
February 1996 in South America
1996 disasters in Peru