Plane crash survivors tell of escape ordeal

Trudging through knee-deep mud in a hail storm, at least 58 survivors managed to escape a flaming Peruvian airliner that splintered as it crash-landed in the Amazon jungle, killing 37 people.

One aviation expert said it a “miracle” that so many walked away.

TANS airline said wind shear on Tuesday afternoon may have forced the pilot’s emergency landing attempt, making TANS Peru Flight 204 the world’s fifth major airline accident this month and August the deadliest month for airline disasters in three years.

The Boeing 737-200 was carrying 98 people, including six crew members, on a domestic flight from the Peruvian capital of Lima to the Amazon city of Pucallpa, company spokesman Jorge Belevan said. The plane’s pilot was among the dead.

Belevan said three missing people might include survivors from Pucallpa who returned to their homes after the crash without receiving medical assistance.

TV images of the crash site showed mutilated bodies being retrieved from a marsh near Pucallpa airport where the pilot had attempted the emergency landing.

The fuselage was shattered and pieces strewn along a 1,640ft path made by the plane as it crash-landed.

“A plane is totally destroyed and more than 50% of the passengers have survived,” John Elliot, an experienced Peruvian pilot and aviation expert, said, calling it “a miracle”.

Jose Leandro Vivas, 43, a Peruvian-American from Brooklyn, New York, survived the crash along with his three daughters, his brother and his sister-in-law.

“We jumped out the plane and unfortunately we were thigh deep in the marsh water. It was just mud,” Vivas said. “We had to practically crawl out of there and try to get to some high ground.”

His brother Gabriel said that he and another man saw a baby boy perhaps a year old behind the plane when they got out.

“He picked up the baby and we tried to get to higher ground. He got stuck in the mud and then I grabbed the baby. Then he jumped in front of me to push away the thorns that were in our way. Between us, we got the baby to higher ground with everybody else,” he said.

Gabriel Vivas said he not did know if the baby’s parents had survived the crash but was told the baby had been brought to Lima and was alive.

Yuri Salas, 38, also walked to safety after crawling from the wreckage.

“I felt a strong impact and a light and fire and felt I was in the middle of flames around the cabin, until I saw to my left a hole to escape through,” he said.

He said he heard another person shouting to him to keep advancing because the plane was going to explode.

“The fire was fierce despite the storm,” he said. “Hail was falling and the mud came up to my knees.”

The pilot began his approach to the airport in torrential rain and strong winds, which passengers said began rocking the plane 10 minutes before the scheduled landing. Four miles from the airstrip, he attempted to make an emergency landing, TANS said, after wind shear apparently pushed his plane close to the ground.

The pilot apparently aimed for the marsh to soften the impact, but the aircraft broke apart in the landing, strewing pieces of fuselage as it skidded over the boggy ground.

Belevan praised the expertise of the pilots and insisted the plane did not crash. “The plane made an emergency landing and the accident occurred during the emergency landing,” he said.

But Elliot and Victor Girao, a former president of Peru’s Association of Pilots, said the crash appeared to be due to pilot error. Elliot said the pilot should have opted to avoid the storm and land at another airport.

Both said the pilot was flying too close to the ground while making the approach to the airport from four miles out, making it difficult to control the aircraft against wind shear.

Search teams have recovered the plane’s cockpit flight data recorder.

Belevan said there were 18 foreigners aboard the aircraft – 11 Americans, four Italians, one Colombian, one Australian and one from Spain.

Among the dead were at least four foreigners – an American man and woman, a Spanish woman and a Colombian woman, said Manuel Rodriguez Rojas, a government identification expert sent to Pucallpa to help identify the dead. Police earlier listed an Italian man as dead but did not mention a Spanish woman.