Avianca Flight 203 was a Colombian domestic passenger flight from

El Dorado International Airport El Dorado International Airport is an international airport serving Bogotá, the capital of Colombia, and its surrounding areas. The airport is located mostly in the Fontibón district of Bogotá, although it partially extends into the Engat ...

Bogotá Bogotá (, also , , ), officially Bogotá, Distrito Capital, abbreviated Bogotá, D.C., and formerly known as Santa Fe de Bogotá (; ) during the Spanish Imperial period and between 1991 and 2000, is the capital city, capital and largest city ...

to Alfonso Bonilla Aragón International Airport in

Cali Santiago de Cali (), or Cali, is the capital of the Valle del Cauca department, and the most populous city in southwest Colombia, with 2,280,522 residents estimate by National Administrative Department of Statistics, DANE in 2023. The city span ...

Colombia Colombia, officially the Republic of Colombia, is a country primarily located in South America with Insular region of Colombia, insular regions in North America. The Colombian mainland is bordered by the Caribbean Sea to the north, Venezuel ...

. It was destroyed by a

bomb A bomb is an explosive weapon that uses the exothermic reaction of an explosive material to provide an extremely sudden and violent release of energy. Detonations inflict damage principally through ground- and atmosphere-transmitted mechan ...

over the municipality of Soacha on November 27, 1989. All 107 people on board as well as three people on the ground were killed. The bombing had been ordered by the Medellín drug cartel.

Aircraft and crew

The aircraft was a Boeing 727-21 with registration number HK-1803, serial number 19035, and line number 272. The aircraft was built in 1966, and had its maiden flight on May 19 of the same year. The aircraft was delivered to

Pan Am Pan American World Airways, originally founded as Pan American Airways and more commonly known as Pan Am, was an airline that was the principal and largest international air carrier and unofficial overseas flag carrier of the United States for ...

on May 28, and was registered as N326PA. Avianca acquired the aircraft in November 1975, when it was re-registered as HK-1803. The captain was José Ignacio Ossa Aristizábal, the first officer was Fernando Pizarro Esguerra, and the flight engineer was Luis Jairo Castiblanco Vargas. There were three flight attendants on board.

Flight

Flight 203 took off as scheduled at 07:13. Five minutes into the flight, at a speed of and an altitude of , an

explosive charge An explosive (or explosive material) is a reactive substance that contains a great amount of potential energy that can produce an explosion if released suddenly, usually accompanied by the production of light, heat, sound, and pressure. An exp ...

detonated, causing fuel vapors in the empty central

fuel tank A fuel tank (also called a petrol tank or gas tank) is a safe container for Flammability, flammable fluids, often gasoline or diesel fuel. Though any storage tank for fuel may be so called, the term is typically applied to part of an engine sys ...

to ignite. Eyewitnesses on the ground reported seeing fire erupt out of the right side of the aircraft's

fuselage The fuselage (; from the French language, French ''fuselé'' "spindle-shaped") is an aircraft's main body section. It holds Aircrew, crew, passengers, or cargo. In single-engine aircraft, it will usually contain an Aircraft engine, engine as wel ...

. A second blast ripped the airliner apart; the nose section separated from the tail section, which went down in flames. The wreckage was scattered in a radius around the town of Soacha. All 107 people on board were killed, as well as three people on the ground who were hit by falling debris.

Background

An investigation determined that

plastic explosive Plastic explosive is a soft and hand-moldable solid form of explosive material. Within the field of explosives engineering, plastic explosives are also known as putty explosives or blastics. Plastic explosives are especially suited for explos ...

s were used to destroy the plane. Drug king

Pablo Escobar Pablo Emilio Escobar Gaviria (; ; 1 December 19492 December 1993) was a Colombian drug lord, narcoterrorist, and politician who was the founder and leader of the Medellín Cartel. Dubbed the "King of Cocaine", Escobar was one of the wealthie ...

, of the Medellín drug cartel, planned the bombing in the lead-up to the 1990 elections, hoping the bomb plot would kill presidential candidate

César Gaviria César Augusto Gaviria Trujillo ( ; born 31 March 1947) is a Colombian economist and politician who served as the President of Colombia from 1990 to 1994, Secretary General of the Organization of American States from 1994 to 2004 and National D ...

. One account states that two unidentified men dressed in suits who worked for Escobar carried the bomb on board. The men sat in seats 18A and 18K, located above the main fuel tank. At the last moment, one of the men left the aircraft, while his partner stayed on board and was killed in the bombing. A young Colombian man named Alberto Prieto was duped into staying on the flight and activating the bomb once the aircraft had become airborne thus unknowingly killing himself; he had been told the device was just a recorder he had to turn on to record the conversation of a nearby couple of passengers; because of this, the man had been nicknamed "El Suizo", or "The Swiss", in reference to his role as a "suicide" bomber. Gaviria was not on the aircraft, despite Escobar's expectations, and went on to be elected

president President most commonly refers to: *President (corporate title) * President (education), a leader of a college or university *President (government title) President may also refer to: Arts and entertainment Film and television *'' Præsident ...

. Two Americans were among the dead, prompting the Bush administration to begin Intelligence Support Activity operations to find Escobar. Nine days after the bombing of the plane, the

DAS Building bombing The DAS Building bombing was a truck bomb attack in Bogotá, Colombia, at 7:30 am on December 6, 1989, targeting the Administrative Department of Security (DAS) headquarters. A truck parked near the building exploded, killing 57 people insta ...

, presumably also ordered by the Medellín Cartel, killed 63 people in

. Dandeny Muñoz Mosquera, the chief

assassin Assassination is the willful killing, by a sudden, secret, or planned attack, of a personespecially if prominent or important. It may be prompted by political, ideological, religious, financial, or military motives. Assassinations are orde ...

for the Medellín Cartel, was convicted in 1994 in

United States District Court The United States district courts are the trial courts of the United States federal judiciary, U.S. federal judiciary. There is one district court for each United States federal judicial district, federal judicial district. Each district cov ...

of having been involved in the bombing and various other crimes, and was sentenced to 10 consecutive

life sentence Life imprisonment is any sentence of imprisonment under which the convicted individual is to remain incarcerated for the rest of their natural life (or until pardoned or commuted to a fixed term). Crimes that result in life imprisonment are c ...

Later events

On November 28, 2016, the Colombian newspaper ''

El Espectador ''El Espectador'' () is a nationally circulated Colombian newspaper founded by Fidel Cano Gutiérrez in 1887 in Medellín and published since 1915 in Bogotá. It was initially published twice a week, 500 issues each, but some years later became ...

'' started publishing an investigative report, consisting of 8 chapters, on Flight 203. It argues that the explosion was caused by a malfunctioning

fuel pump A Fuel pump is a component used in many liquid-fuelled engines (such as petrol/gasoline or diesel engines) to transfer the fuel from the fuel tank to the device where it is mixed with the intake air (such as the carburetor or fuel inject ...

inside a tank which had been reported several times before. The report was heavily criticized by Avianca and family members of the victims.

In popular culture

This event is dramatized in Season 1, Episode 6 of '' Narcos'' (2015).

References

External links

* {{Aviation incidents and accidents in 1989 1989 in Colombia 1989 murders in Colombia Mass murder in 1989 Aviation accidents and incidents in 1989 Terrorist incidents in South America in 1989 Terrorist incidents in Colombia in the 1980s November 1989 in South America Airliner bombings Aviation accidents and incidents in Colombia Avianca accidents and incidents Accidents and incidents involving the Boeing 727 Failed assassination attempts in South America 20th-century mass murder in Colombia Organized crime events in Colombia Colombian conflict Medellín Cartel Pablo Escobar 1989 disasters in Colombia Military history of Bogotá Soacha