It disappeared from radar between 11:55 a.m. and 12:05 p.m., but ATC did not declare an emergency for nearly a day, because of the limited nature of Panama's radar coverage at the time. West Caribbean Airways Flight 708 was a West Caribbean Airways charter flight which crashed in a mountainous region in northwest Venezuela in the early hours of Tuesday, 16 August 2005, killing all 160 passengers and crew on board. Flight 201 is the deadliest accident in Panamanian aviation history, and also the first (and to date, only) fatal crash in the history of At 20:48 (8:48 p.m.), Captain Chial made another radio contact requesting permission from Panama City ATC to fly a different route due to the severe weather ahead. This caused confusion to the pilots about determining the setting of the ADI switches for the aircraft that was being operated at the time. At 20:47 (8:47 p.m.), about 10 minutes after takeoff, Captain Chial contacted Panama City Air Traffic Control, requesting weather information.
The plane, except for the tail section, was destroyed by the impact against the mountain.
The investigation into the crash was surrounded by controversy and speculation about the circumstances of how the aircraft crashed. The passengers on the flight were General There is much controversy about how the plane crashed. Also, they concluded that the plane was in perfect conditions at the time of the crash.
Plane and its two crew has never been found. crashed near coast of Venezuela during training mission Apr 1, 1985 North West of Santiago, Panama while operating from USS Nimitz (CVN-68).
The general public and relatives of the victims did not accept the conclusions of the final report, and they accused the military government of a After the fall of the military dictatorship in Panama in 1989, in pre-trial hearings in Miami in May 1991, However, these facts were not enough to start a new investigation for further proofs. At the controls were captain Azael Adames and sub-lieutenant Victor Rangel as co-pilot. Large sections of the aircraft crashed onto a residential street in Lockerbie, Scotland, killing 11 people on the ground. On 21 December 1988, N739PA, the aircraft operating the transatlantic leg of the route was destroyed by a bomb, killing all 243 passengers and 16 crew in what became known as the Lockerbie bombing. On August 1, the media reported the disappearance of the plane and the government declared the disappearance of Torrijos. SomeIn 1983, the inquiry into the accident concluded that the pilots on charge of the flight were to blame for the lack of situational awareness and poor decision-making, which led to the crash. EGLIN AFB — An F-22 fighter jet with the 43rd Fighter Squadron crashed at about 9:15 a.m. Friday on the Eglin Air Force Base reservation.
After several unsuccessful attempts to contact the lost plane, Tocumen ATC finally declared a full emergency in the airport and informed the Colombian ATC centre at Bogota about the missing plane. Despite the attempts by Captain Chial and First Officer Tejada to level off, the airplane continued its steep dive, until it exceeded the speed of sound and started to break apart at 10,000 feet (3,048 metres). The news about Torrijos' death caused a crisis in the military dictatorship and nationwide mourning in After recovering the bodies, investigations were begun by Panamanian authorities and the FBI. Copa also had to reconfigure the operations of its fleet via a major overhaul until it became one of the most modern and safest airlines in the Americas.The accident remains as the deadliest plane crash in Panamanian aviation and Copa Airlines' history as of 2020.As a result of the accident, the relatives of those who perished in the crash filed 49 wrongful death lawsuits against In 1993, one of the relatives of Clariza Bernal Luna, one of the US passengers that were on the flight, filed a lawsuit against Copa Airlines in a Texas federal court, alleging that the airline had sold a ticket to the passenger through a travel agency in Houston, although the airline has no operations centre in Texas. At the controls were captain Azael Adames and sub-lieutenant Victor Rangel as co-pilot. The switch of the Captain's ADI was found at the scene of the accident in the “Both on VG-1” position, feeding both of the ADI from the same, intermittently faulty, pilot side VG. This reaction rolled the aircraft to almost 80 degrees and caused it to go into a steep dive, with no chance for recovery.The investigation team also found that the backup ADI (Stand-by) was probably available to the pilots during the intermittent failure of the main instruments systems (the post-impact damage of the Stand-by indicator showed that it was operating properly up to impact with the ground), but due to an ineffective cross-checking procedure done by the pilots, the backup ADI was not used correctly to identify the problem and select a reliable source of attitude information. In the morning of the next day, Colombian and Panamanian radio stations were reporting that some residents of Tucutí and other villages nearby to the crash site said that on the night of the accident they felt a very strong explosion, meanwhile others said that they saw a burning object that was falling from the sky towards the jungle.However, these reports were eventually dismissed by the head of Panama's civil aviation authority, Zosimo Guardia.In the wake of the disaster, Copa gave flights to Panama City to the families of the victims; the main executive members of Copa Holdings declared a permanent emergency meeting session at the airline's main headquarters in Panama City. The passengers on the flight were General Omar Torrijos Herrera, mechanic Carlos E. Rivera, Sergeant Ricardo Machazek, bodyguard assistant Jaime Correa, and dentist Teresa Ferreiro. The government knew about the plane's disappearance, but did not comment until the rescue mission was organized. Narrative: A-6E Intruder BuNo.