What happened
On the evening of the accident, a Boeing 757 (implied cargo aircraft) was conducting a scheduled freight service for DHL, traveling from Montevideo-Carrasco Airport to Buenos Aires. The flight departed from runway 24 at 19:45 local time with instructions to climb to an altitude of 8,000 feet.
While the aircraft was ascending and had reached an altitude of approximately 4,500 feet, it experienced an uncontrolled descent. The aircraft struck the sea at a high velocity of 570 knots, resulting in the immediate disintegration of the airframe near Flores Island.
Search efforts following the impact yielded limited results initially, with only small pieces of debris spotted on the water's surface the next day. The primary wreckage was not located until two weeks later, situated roughly one nautical mile south of Flores Island. In February 2013, the cargo door was recovered by local fishermen. Despite these findings, no remains of the crew or any traces of the cargo were ever recovered.
Findings
Investigators recovered the cockpit voice recorder on August 2, 2012; however, the device was deemed unreadable for the purpose of the accident investigation because the recorded data pertained to the final 30 minutes of a previous flight rather than the accident itself.