What happened
A flight departing from Caracas-Maiquetía-Simon Bolivar entered an uncontrolled descent approximately 37 minutes after takeoff. The aircraft was conducting a scheduled test flight following recent maintenance work and was carrying a total of eleven people, consisting of three crew members and eight engineers and technicians.
During the execution of the test program, roughly nine minutes after the procedures began, the pilot transmitted a brief mayday distress signal, though the specific details of the message were not clearly understood. Shortly thereafter, the aircraft went down in the ocean approximately 16 km from Margarita Island. Upon hitting the water, the aircraft underwent structural disintegration. While some fragments of debris were observed floating on the surface, the bulk of the wreckage sank to a great depth and has not been retrieved.
Findings
The investigation noted that the aircraft entered a state of uncontrolled descent following the initiation of the maintenance test sequence. The exact nature of the emergency remains under investigation due to the lack of recovered wreckage from the seafloor.