Accident Sequence
Shortly after takeoff from runway 36 at Cartagena-Crespo Airport, while climbing to a height of 70 feet, the airplane descended and crashed into the sea some 1,310 metres past the runway end. All four crew members and 52 passengers were killed while eight others were rescued. The aircraft was destroyed.
Crew
The crew consisted of pilot Humberto Gómez Mejia, copilot José Maria Macea Causil, steward Abel Piramanrique, and stewardess Susana Gonzalez.
Probable Cause
According to the official findings, the accident was attributed to a maintenance error resulting from inadequate inspection periodic, daily, nightly and transit servicing and consisting in failure to notice the absence of a pin looseness and/or absence of a nut which joins the torsion links of the left landing gear. A possible contributing factor in the accident was pilot error, consisting in involuntary negligence in observing or wrongly interpreting the aircraft instruments during takeoff, at the time of changing over from VFR to IFR flight and/or loss of control of the aircraft by the pilot-in-command when checking the cause of a failure in the landing gear well and n°2 engine.