Aeropostal Alas de Venezuela Flight 109
Aeropostal Alas de Venezuela Flight 109 was a short-haul flight from La Chinita International Airport in Maracaibo, Venezuela to Santa Barbara Ed-L Delicias Airport that crashed on March 5, 1991.Aircraft
The aircraft used on Flight 109 was a McDonnell Douglas DC-9, which has been in service with Aeropostal for 14 years; the aircraft had been manufactured in 1976.The "Guillotine of Los Andes"
The Páramo "Los Torres" is known among Venezuelan pilots as The Guillotine of the Andes. In a literal sense, it is a steep, usually foggy mountain that pilots had trouble avoiding before proper ground proximity warning systems were installed in planes. Prior to Flight 109, two other commercial aircraft had crashed near "The Guillotine". On December 15, 1950, an Avensa Douglas DC-3 flying from Mérida to Caracas crashed, killing all 28 passengers and 3 crew. Ten years later, on December 15, 1960, a Ransa flight crashed, killing all of its passengers.Accident
Flight 109 took off from La Chinita International Airport with 45 passengers and crew. Several minutes later, the McDonnell Douglas DC-9-32 crashed on the side of a foggy mountain near "The Guillotine" near La Valesa in the La Aguada sector of the Páramo Los Torres and burst into flames. All 45 people on board died.Cause
An investigation into the accident found that the cause of the crash was pilot error. The pilots inadvertently entered the wrong radial into their navigation system and went off course. Because of fog in the area, the pilots did not know they were on a collision course with the mountain.