Fourteen people were killed in a plane crash in the Colombian plains province of Meta on Saturday, the country’s civil aviation agency said.
The Special Administrative Unit of Civil Aeronautics said there were no survivors of the crash, which occurred after the DC-3 aircraft made a distress call at 10:40 a.m. local time (1540 GMT).
The plane, which is owned by Laser Aereo airlines, was en route from the southern city of San Jose del Guaviare to central Villavicencio, the agency said.
It crashed about midway through its flight, in San Carlos de Guaroa municipality.
The airline said it had no immediate comment.
In a later statement posted on Twitter, the agency named those who had died, including the mayor of a small town in the jungle province of Vaupes.
Engine failure forces Air France with 500 people on board back to Ivory Coast Airport
A mid-flight engine failure forced an Air France A380 jet with more than 500 passengers on board to turn back to the Ivory Coast capital Abidjan where it landed without further incident early Sunday.
“We were flying over Niger (to Paris)… I saw a ball of flame for a few seconds and then a large bang on the left side of the aircraft,” Baudelaire Mieu, a journalist with Bloomberg News, told AFP.
“The plane began to roll, everything was shaking and people started to panic. The pilot came on and said ‘We have just lost a left side engine. We are returning to Abidjan,” Mieu said.
ADVERTISEMENT
The Air France-KLM manager for West Africa Jean-Luc Mevellec confirmed the incident.
“Technically, it is what is called an engine blow-out. It is a well known problem,” Mevellec told AFP.
“It happens from time to time. It is a well known phenomenon, well understood and crew are well trained on simulators all year long to deal with this type of fault,” he added.
Mieu said the giant four-engined aircraft, the world’s biggest passenger jet, “continued to vibrate all the way back to Abidjan. People were praying.”
Add your comments: Download Our News App Here
