HAVANA, Cuba (AFP) — A Cuban airliner with more than 100 people on board crashed Friday after takeoff from Havana with many feared dead.
Here is a list of the worst air accidents in Latin America over the past three decades:
– November 28, 2016, COLOMBIA
Neto is one of the survivors of the LaMia airlines charter that crashed into the mountains outside Medellin on November 28 killing most of Brazilian football team Chapecoense. Investigations are ongoing, Bolivia has suspended the airline’s permit and arrested its manager and his son -an official in the civil aviation authority-, whilst Colombia’s civil aviation safety chief has said the plane disregarded international rules on fuel reserves. / AFP PHOTO / RAUL ARBOLEDA
– A British Aerospace 146 belonging to Bolivian charter company LaMia crashed into the Colombian mountains at 3,300 meters (10,827 feet) altitude. It claimed the lives of 71 people, including all but a handful of players from the Chapecoense team of southern Brazil.
Only six people survived, three of them Chapecoense players.
– June 1, 2009, BRAZIL
– An Air France Airbus A-330 disappeared over the Atlantic in a zone of air turbulence after taking off from Rio de Janeiro on a flight to Paris with 228 on board.
It took two years to find the wreckage of the plane off Brazil.
– July 17, 2007, BRAZIL
– An Airbus A320 of TAM airlines missed its landing at Congonhas airport in Sao Paulo and crashed, with 187 people on board, into a cargo building occupied by several workers.
The toll was 199 dead, including 12 people on the ground.
– September 29, 2006, BRAZIL
– A Boeing 737 belonging to GOL crashed in the Amazon forest with 155 people on board. There were no survivors. The plane had collided with a Legacy business jet, whose seven American passengers and crew emerged unscathed.
– August 16, 2005, VENEZUELA
– A McDonnell Douglas MD-82 twinjet, belonging to Colombian airline West Caribbean, crashed at Maracaibo in a mountainous area near the border with Colombia, killing 152 French passengers and eight Colombian crew members. The plane was flying between Panama and the French Antilles territory of Martinique.
– July 9, 2000, COLOMBIA
– 113 people were killed and seven injured when a DC-4 cargo plane belonging to Coral crashed two minutes after takeoff from Villavicencio, 113 kilometers (70 miles) to the southeast of Bogota.
– October 31, 1996, BRAZIL
– A Fokker 100 belonging to Brazilian company TAM crashed in a residential neighbourhood of Sao Paulo, killing 101 people including five on the ground.
– February 29, 1996, PERU
– 123 were killed, with no survivors, in the crash of a Boeing 737 of Peruvian company Fawcett shortly before landing at Arequipa in the south.
– February 6, 1996, DOMINICAN REPUBLIC
– A Boeing 757 belonging to charter company Alas Nacionales crashed into the sea with 189 people on board as it flew from the Dominican Republic to Germany.
– December 20, 1995, COLOMBIA
– 160 were killed and four survived in the crash of an American Airlines Boeing 757 in the Andes mountains during its descent to Cali airport in the southwest of the country.
– May 19, 1993, COLOMBIA
– A Boeing 727 of SAM Colombia crashed at nearly 4,000 meters (13,000 feet) altitude into Mount Paramo Frontimo, about 40 kilometers (25 miles) from Medellin in the northwest. 132 people died.
– October 21, 1989, HONDURAS
– A Boeing 727 belonging to Honduran company Sasha crashed outside Tegucigalpa, killing 131.
– September 3, 1989, CUBA
– An Ilyushin 62 belonging to Cuba’s Cubana de Aviacion, headed for Italy, crashed on takeoff in a neighborhood next to Havana airport. The disaster killed all 126 people on the plane, mainly Italian tourists, as well as around 45 people on the ground.
– June 7, 1989, SURINAM
– The crash of a Surinam Airways DC-8 flying from Amsterdam as it landed at Surinam’s capital Paramaribo left 174 dead, including 23 Surinam-born Dutch footballers.
© Agence France-Presse