The 1987 Alianza Lima air disaster occurred on 8 December 1987, when a Peruvian Navy

Fokker F27 The Fokker F27 Friendship is a turboprop airliner developed and manufactured by the Dutch aircraft manufacturer Fokker. It is the most numerous post-war aircraft manufactured in the Netherlands; the F27 was also one of the most successful Europe ...

-400M chartered by

Peru Peru, officially the Republic of Peru, is a country in western South America. It is bordered in the north by Ecuador and Colombia, in the east by Brazil, in the southeast by Bolivia, in the south by Chile, and in the south and west by the Pac ...

vian

football Football is a family of team sports that involve, to varying degrees, kick (football), kicking a football (ball), ball to score a goal (sports), goal. Unqualified, football (word), the word ''football'' generally means the form of football t ...

club

Alianza Lima Club Alianza Lima, more commonly known as simply Alianza Lima, is a Peru, Peruvian professional sports club based in La Victoria District, Lima, La Victoria District of Lima, Peru. The club was founded under the name of Sport Alianza on February ...

crashed into the

Pacific Ocean The Pacific Ocean is the largest and deepest of Earth's five Borders of the oceans, oceanic divisions. It extends from the Arctic Ocean in the north to the Southern Ocean, or, depending on the definition, to Antarctica in the south, and is ...

seven miles from

Jorge Chávez International Airport Jorge Chávez International Airport is the main international airport serving Lima, the capital of Peru. It is located in Callao, northwest of the Historic Centre of Lima, the nation's capital city, and from the Miraflores District, Lima, dis ...

near the city of

Callao Callao () is a Peruvian seaside city and Regions of Peru, region on the Pacific Ocean in the Lima metropolitan area. Callao is Peru's chief seaport and home to its main airport, Jorge Chávez International Airport. Callao municipality consists ...

. Of the 43 people on board, only the pilot survived. The Peruvian Naval Aviation Commission investigated the accident and created a report but never officially disclosed its content. Eventually, the Navy's accident report was discovered and details of it were released. In the report, investigators cited pilot error as the primary cause of the accident.

Accident

Alianza was scheduled to play a football match against

Deportivo Pucallpa Deportivo Pucallpa is a Peruvian football club, playing in the city of Pucallpa, Ucayali, Peru. History They were originally called Deportivo COOPTRIP, and played in the 1985 Torneo Descentralizado. The club participated in 1985 Torneo Descentra ...

in the Amazonionan city of

Pucallpa Pucallpa (, ; Shipibo language, Shipibo: ''May Ushin'') is a city in eastern Peru located on the banks of the Ucayali River, a major tributary of the Amazon River. It is the capital of the Ucayali region, the Coronel Portillo Province and the C ...

and had organized a charter aircraft, a Folker F-27, charted by the Air Services branch of the

Peruvian Navy The Peruvian Navy (, abbreviated MGP) is the branch of the Peruvian Military of Peru, Armed Forces tasked with surveillance, patrol and defense on lakes, rivers and the Pacific Ocean up to from the Peruvian littoral. Additional missions include ...

for the trip to Pucallpa and back. Alianza Lima won the game 1–0 to take them top of the table and were in control of the table with only a few games remaining; the team hadn't won the title since 1978 while their biggest rivals Universario and

Sporting Cristal Club Sporting Cristal S.A., shortened to Sporting Cristal, is a Peruvian sports club located in the city of Lima, best known for its association football, soccer team. It was founded on 13 December 1955 in the Rímac District, Rímac district by e ...

had each won 5 titles since. Therefore the team was elated, and despite the

pilot in command The pilot in command (PIC) of an aircraft is the person aboard an aircraft who is ultimately responsible for its operation and safety during flight. This would be the captain in a typical two- or three- pilot aircrew, or "pilot" if there is only ...

having reservations about the plane's condition, the aircraft departed Pucallpa at 6:30 p.m. On board were Peruvian Navy Lieutenant Edilberto Villar as pilot, César Morales as copilot, 4 cabin crewmembers, 16 players, coach

Marcos Calderón Marcos Calderón (11 July 1928 – 8 December 1987) was a Peruvian football coach and player. During his tenure the Peru national team won the Copa América 1975 and reached the second round of the 1978 World Cup. The flight was uneventful until the crew began their descent into Lima. Upon lowering the landing gear, the left and right main gear displayed green lights, indicating down and locked, but the nose gear did not. Villar requested that Morales consult the flight manual for the proper procedure to follow. The manual was written in English and because Morales's foreign language skill was poor he read out the wrong procedure. The crew requested a fly-by of the control tower so that observers could confirm that the nose gear was down. Using binoculars the observers confirmed that the airplane was configured for landing and the crew brought the aircraft around for another attempt at a landing. While over water the aircraft flew too low and the right wing struck the surface of the ocean as the aircraft was lining up with the runway, northwest of the airport. The airliner broke up on impact and the forward fuselage sank.

Aircraft

The aircraft involved was a Fokker F27-400M Friendship, registration AE-560. The airliner, with

serial number A serial number (SN) is a unique identifier used to ''uniquely'' identify an item, and is usually assigned incrementally or sequentially. Despite being called serial "numbers", they do not need to be strictly numerical and may contain letters ...

10548, had first flown in 1977 and had logged a total of 5,908 hours.

Passengers

Alianza lost the majority of its team as a result of the accident. Notable passengers on the flight included: Players * José Casanova * Luis Escobar *

José González Ganoza José Manuel González Ganoza (10 July 1954 – 8 December 1987), sometimes known as Caíco, was a Peruvian international footballer who played as a goalkeeper. González Ganoza was among the victims of the 1987 Alianza Lima air disaster. His ...

Alfredo Tomassini Alfredo Tomasini (24 June 1964 – 8 December 1987) was a Peruvian football player. Nicknamed ''el Tanque Blanco'', Tomasini was a forward for the club Sporting Cristal between 1985 and 1986 and Alianza Lima, until 1987 when he died in an airpla ...

Johnny Watson Johnny is an English language personal name. It is usually an affectionate diminutive of the masculine given name John, but from the 16th century it has sometimes been a given name in its own right for males and, less commonly, females. Variant ...

Coach *

Investigation

Following the crash the Peruvian Navy refused to make any statements concerning the cause of the accident. The Peruvian Naval Aviation Commission allowed no private investigations to take place and began its own investigation. An accident report was made but not released to the public. In 2006 producers working on a story for Peruvian television program ''La Ventana Indiscreta'' uncovered the Navy report which had been illegally locked in a Florida deposit box for 18 years. The investigation cited the pilot's lack of night flying experience, the co-pilots misreading of the emergency procedures related to the landing gear issue, and the aircraft's poor mechanical condition as contributing factors to the accident. According to the report, dated February 1988, Lieutenant Villar had logged just 5.3 hours of night flying in the 90 days preceding the accident, 3.3 of them in the previous 60 days, and had not flown at night in at least 30 days before the crash. The copilot, First Lieutenant César Morales, had logged only one hour of night flying in the 90 days preceding the accident, half an hour in the preceding 60 days, and had also not flown at night in at least 30 days. Additionally, the F27's maintenance log, which was handed to the pilot before takeoff, showed a series of mechanical defects including lacking an inertial guidance system, poor

UHF Ultra high frequency (UHF) is the ITU designation for radio frequencies in the range between 300 megahertz (MHz) and 3 gigahertz (GHz), also known as the decimetre band as the wavelengths range from one meter to one tenth of a meter ...

radio performance, a VOR receiving unit with inadequate reception, a malfunctioning

radar altimeter A radar altimeter (RA), also called a radio altimeter (RALT), electronic altimeter, reflection altimeter, or low-range radio altimeter (LRRA), measures altitude above the terrain presently beneath an aircraft or spacecraft by timing how long it t ...

and a worn front landing gear indicator light switch. Lieutenant Villar initially refused to fly the aircraft out of concern for its condition. In a letter from the

Fokker Fokker (; ) was a Dutch aircraft manufacturer that operated from 1912 to 1996. The company was founded by the Dutch aviator Anthony Fokker and became famous during World War I for its fighter aircraft. During its most successful period in the 19 ...

aircraft company, dated October 16, 1986, the manufacturer noted that Lieutenant Villar had failed a special training course which could have prevented "his disorientation while operating under pressure, the excessive demand of work in a cabin", but was granted permission to fly the aircraft regardless. Copilot César Morales had received no flight training from Fokker.

References

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