No survivors of Venezuelan air crash
Officials said there appear to be no survivors as a plane carrying residents of the French island of Martinique crashed in western Venezuela with at least 160 people on board today.
The French civil aviation authority said all were French citizens from the Caribbean island of Martinique.
The West Caribbean Airways plane was headed from Panama to Martinique when its pilot reported trouble with both engines to the Caracas air control tower just after 7am, said Francisco Paz, president of the National Aviation Institute.
Airport authorities lost radio contact with the plane roughly 10 minutes later in the area of Machiques, 400 miles west of Caracas in the western border state of Zulia, he said.
Interior Minister Jesse Chacon said military helicopters and planes flying over the area indicated “it’s very unlikely there could be survivors”.
The airline, in a statement from Colombia, said 152 passengers, including a small child, and eight Colombian crew members were aboard the MD82, made by McDonnell Douglas. The discrepancy in numbers could not immediately be resolved.
French President Jacques Chirac expressed his “strong emotion” as he learned of the “appalling catastrophe” and offered condolences to families of victims “in the name of all French”.
He sent Overseas Minister Francois Baroin to Martinique and ordered a crisis centre opened at the Foreign Ministry. The US sent five investigators to Venezuela to help.
West Caribbean Airways, a Colombian airline, began service in 1998. In March, a twin-engine plane it operated crashed during takeoff from the Colombian island of Old Providence, killing eight people and injuring the other six passengers.
Two other aeroplane crashes in Venezuela in the past year both involved military planes. In December, a military plane crashed in a mountainous area near Caracas, killing all 16 people on board.
In August 2004, a military plane crashed into a mountain in central Venezuela, killing 25 people.
