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SAETA Flight 232

October 23, 2023

On 15 August 1976, SAETA Flight 232 en route from Quito, Ecuador to Cuenca was reported missing while in flight. The SAETA-operated Vickers Viscount 785D carried 55 passengers and four crew members. The snow-capped mountain Chimborazo, which is 150 kilometers from the capital and stands 6,319 meters above sea level, is thought to be a dangerous part of the route.

SAETA Flight 232
The aircraft involved in the incident, pictured at the former Mariscal Sucre Airport in December 1975, eight months before the crash.
Accident
Date15 August 1976
SummaryCFIT into mountain
SiteChimborazo volcano, Chimborazo Province, Ecuador
Aircraft
Aircraft typeVickers Viscount 785D
OperatorSAETA
RegistrationHC-ARS
Flight originMariscal Sucre International Airport, Quito, Ecuador
DestinationMariscal Lamar Airport, Cuenca, Ecuador
Passengers55
Crew4
Fatalities59
Survivors0

Searches of the possible crash area produced no results. A mid-route crash on the stratovolcano Chimborazo was considered to be most probable, though some speculated a guerrilla hijacking.[1]

The pilot's last contact with the control tower reported that he was flying over the city of Ambato, but the station soon after lost all communication with the plane. As a result of the impact, the vessel was hidden amidst the snowy glacier of Chimborazo. The place of impact was declared a graveyard, and the remains were not recovered. The planes's remains were lost for 26 years, which led to a lot of speculation about why the plane and its people went missing, as well as some controversy when they were found again.

The plane was eventually found at 5,310 meters (17,420 feet) in October 2002 by two members of the Nuevos Horizontes mountaineering club, Pablo Chiquiza and Flavio Armas, while exploring a new route to the summit of Chimborazo via the García Moreno Glacier. However, they did not report it immediately. The discovery wasn't confirmed until February 2003, when a team hired by the television network Teleamazonas went up the volcano to record a video of the wreckage and found human remains, newspapers from the day the plane disappeared, and identification cards of known passengers.[2][3][4]

Discovery Edit

After intense, unsuccessful searches for the remains of the aircraft both in air and on land in the area of the route towards Cuenca and other places like the Ozogoche area, south of the Chimborazo province, in the Ecuadorian coast and the Ecuadorian East, neither the plane nor its occupants could be found. Relatives of the victims sought supernatural explanations and asked for the help of psychics; some even hinted at the theory of alien abduction. The search was terminated without finding a single trace.

In October 2002, 26 years after the accident, mountaineers Pablo Chíquiza and Flavio Armas ascended a nearly unexplored face of the snowy mountain. On the second day of search they ran up into the remains of the plane at 5,550 meters. Impressed by such a finding, they took samples of the cans and newspapers that, in spite of the past 26 years, were still legible. They continued up the mountain, but after climbing several additional meters, they decided to turn around to stay overnight with the remains. On the third day, they descended down the mountain.

Months later, on February 14, 2003, widespread news of the plane's discovery by mountaineer Miguel Cazar, who was interviewed by Teleamazonas, revealed that they had seen both metal and human remains in the García Moreno glacier of the Chimborazo volcano. The mountaineers and discoverers, Chíquiza and Armas, accompanied by soldiers from Ecuador's "Special Forces 9th Brigade" (Spanish: Brigada de Fuerzas Especiales N°9 Patria), arrived at the volcano to mark the exact site where they found the remains of the plane.

After reading the newspapers of the time and confirming with a document from the General Civil Aviation Directorate (DAC) obtained by retired Major Galo Arrieta, they concluded that the plane still had not been found. Arrieta established contact with Pablo Chíquiza during the two days of discovery and promised to help them with the investigation, as well as the subsequent broadcast of the discovery, as long as the first to hear of the news was then-elected President Lucio Gutiérrez.[5]

Therefore, on December 23 of the same year, Chíquiza and Armas ventured back up to the Chimborazo, this time specifically looking for evidence such as personal artifacts or aircraft identifiers that could verify the presumed identity of the flight. At the discretion of the climbers, the search for human remains was laborious. Nevertheless, in spite of the snow that covered the area of the accident, they succeeded in finding the identification document of one of the passengers. With the said document, they believed their search was sufficient and descended the mountain.

After turning over the document and other evidence of the plane to Arrieta, the wait for the news release was longer than they expected. According to the climbers, Arrieta "dragged his feet on the matter" until finally, after pressuring the colonel and not obtaining an interview with Lucio Gutiérrez as they had been promised, they obtained an interview with the minister of Defense, Nelson Herrera, who immediately ordered a military expedition be sent to the place of discovery and to spread the news.

Due to the delayed release of news regarding the discovery, a series of investigations began under the authority of the National Congress,[4] the police, and the government. According to Bernardo Abad, a journalist for Teleamazonas, they asked for thousands of dollars for the video Rodrigo Donoso delivered to the channel and its subsequent broadcast. According to some photographers, he also wanted to sell them photos for 100 dollars.

On their side, Chíquiza and Armas presented another video in Canal Uno hours before Teleamazonas to refute that Donoso and his team were the head of the discovery. Chíquiza, Armas, Donoso, among others, testified in Congress, giving their versions to the district attorney's office as well. On his side of the case, Arrieta admitted that he knew of the discovery but, according to him, "had to make sure the president (Lucio Gutiérrez) was the first to find out and for this reason, could not share the news with other people."

The families, in spite of the pain and outrage of all these facts, finally knew with near certainty what happened to the plane and where their loved ones lay. Later, by the suggestion of the military and the climbers Chíquiza and Armas, the area where they found the remains was declared a holy field due to the difficulty of recovering all the bodies.

Cause Edit

Speculation surrounding the existence of the flight data recorder (FDR) and the cockpit voice recorder (CVR), colloquially known as the "black boxes" (but actually of orange color) followed the discovery of the plane's remains, as there is no certainty as to whether the plane carried both or either device. In this line, the DAC stated that no black boxes were aboard the aircraft; however, Patricio Mosquera, a former SAETA Viscount pilot who flew HC-ARS the day before its crash [6] and later led SAETA's own search for the plane,[7] declared that it carried at least (possibly) the FDR, which he claimed was mandated by DAC back in 1976. However, Mosquera was not sure whether the Viscount carried the CVR, claiming a long time had elapsed and did not remember it.[6]

Still, the opinion that at least either of the two devices was onboard was echoed by Carlos Serrano, former vice-president of SAETA, who claimed that when HC-ARS and its twin HC-AVP, were bought from Alitalia in the early 1970s, they carried both devices.[6] In a tragic twist, HC-AVP also crashed in high ground flying the same Quito-Cuenca route (as Flight 011) on 23 April 1979, but its wreckage was only found 5 years later in the Amazonian jungle province of Pastaza, 25 miles off course its original path and killing the five crew and 52 passengers.[8][9]

In the end, the victims' families' agreement to declare the Flight 232 crash site a holy field meant that, aside from ending the search for human remains and aircraft debris, DAC pursued no official investigation of the tragedy and that neither the organization nor the Attorney's Office of Riobamba would search for it.[6] Consequently, the cause of the crash is not known.

References Edit

  1. ^ UPI (12 September 1976). "After a month, plane still missing". Ellensburg Daily Record. Quito, Ecuador. p. 5. from the original on 30 May 2016. Retrieved 25 September 2016.
  2. ^ "Plane crash's frozen victims found 27 years later". The Sydney Morning Herald. Associated Press. 19 February 2003. from the original on 19 April 2015. Retrieved 31 May 2012.
  3. ^ "Restos de 59 víctimas de accidente de avión descansarán entre la nieve". www.cronica.com.mx (in Mexican Spanish). from the original on 12 September 2017. Retrieved 11 September 2017.
  4. ^ a b "Se confirma que hallazgo de avión fue el año pasado" [It is confirmed that the discovery of the plane was last year] (in Spanish). 21 February 2003. from the original on 14 April 2016. Retrieved 23 May 2018.
  5. ^ "Ministro de Defensa y Galo Arrieta" [Minister of Defense and Galo Arrieta]. El Universo (in Spanish). 21 February 2003. from the original on 10 April 2023. Retrieved 10 April 2023.
  6. ^ a b c d "Polémica por caja negra" [Controversy over black box]. El Universo (in Spanish). 22 February 2003. from the original on 16 May 2023. Retrieved 20 May 2023.
  7. ^ "Viscount c/n 377 operational record". www.vickersviscount.net. from the original on 4 March 2016. Retrieved 20 May 2023.
  8. ^ "ASN Aircraft accident Vickers 785D Viscount HC-AVP Pastaza Province". aviation-safety.net. from the original on 22 March 2022. Retrieved 20 May 2023.
  9. ^ "Viscount c/n 329 operational record". www.vickersviscount.net. from the original on 10 June 2023. Retrieved 20 May 2023.

External links Edit

  • Description at Aviation Safety Network
  • Hallaron en Ecuador un avión de pasajeros que se estrelló hace 26 años
  • Se confirma que hallazgo de avión fue el año pasado
  • Junta Investigadora de Accidentes confirmó hallazgo de restos de avión perdido en 1976
  • After a month, plane still missing
  • Plane crash's frozen victims found 27 years later

See also Edit

 

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October 23, 2023
saeta, flight, this, article, multiple, issues, please, help, improve, discuss, these, issues, talk, page, learn, when, remove, these, template, messages, this, article, need, rewritten, comply, with, wikipedia, quality, standards, help, talk, page, contain, s. This article has multiple issues Please help improve it or discuss these issues on the talk page Learn how and when to remove these template messages This article may need to be rewritten to comply with Wikipedia s quality standards You can help The talk page may contain suggestions August 2022 This article s tone or style may not reflect the encyclopedic tone used on Wikipedia See Wikipedia s guide to writing better articles for suggestions August 2022 Learn how and when to remove this template message This article needs additional citations for verification Please help improve this article by adding citations to reliable sources Unsourced material may be challenged and removed Find sources SAETA Flight 232 news newspapers books scholar JSTOR August 2022 Learn how and when to remove this template message You can help expand this article with text translated from the corresponding article in Spanish January 2017 Click show for important translation instructions Machine translation like DeepL or Google Translate is a useful starting point for translations but translators must revise errors as necessary and confirm that the translation is accurate rather than simply copy pasting machine translated text into the English Wikipedia Consider adding a topic to this template there are already 5 121 articles in the main category and specifying topic will aid in categorization Do not translate text that appears unreliable or low quality If possible verify the text with references provided in the foreign language article You must provide copyright attribution in the edit summary accompanying your translation by providing an interlanguage link to the source of your translation A model attribution edit summary is Content in this edit is translated from the existing Spanish Wikipedia article at es Vuelo 011 de SAETA see its history for attribution You should also add the template Translated es Vuelo 011 de SAETA to the talk page For more guidance see Wikipedia Translation Learn how and when to remove this template message On 15 August 1976 SAETA Flight 232 en route from Quito Ecuador to Cuenca was reported missing while in flight The SAETA operated Vickers Viscount 785D carried 55 passengers and four crew members The snow capped mountain Chimborazo which is 150 kilometers from the capital and stands 6 319 meters above sea level is thought to be a dangerous part of the route SAETA Flight 232The aircraft involved in the incident pictured at the former Mariscal Sucre Airport in December 1975 eight months before the crash AccidentDate15 August 1976SummaryCFIT into mountainSiteChimborazo volcano Chimborazo Province EcuadorAircraftAircraft typeVickers Viscount 785DOperatorSAETARegistrationHC ARSFlight originMariscal Sucre International Airport Quito EcuadorDestinationMariscal Lamar Airport Cuenca EcuadorPassengers55Crew4Fatalities59Survivors0Searches of the possible crash area produced no results A mid route crash on the stratovolcano Chimborazo was considered to be most probable though some speculated a guerrilla hijacking 1 The pilot s last contact with the control tower reported that he was flying over the city of Ambato but the station soon after lost all communication with the plane As a result of the impact the vessel was hidden amidst the snowy glacier of Chimborazo The place of impact was declared a graveyard and the remains were not recovered The planes s remains were lost for 26 years which led to a lot of speculation about why the plane and its people went missing as well as some controversy when they were found again The plane was eventually found at 5 310 meters 17 420 feet in October 2002 by two members of the Nuevos Horizontes mountaineering club Pablo Chiquiza and Flavio Armas while exploring a new route to the summit of Chimborazo via the Garcia Moreno Glacier However they did not report it immediately The discovery wasn t confirmed until February 2003 when a team hired by the television network Teleamazonas went up the volcano to record a video of the wreckage and found human remains newspapers from the day the plane disappeared and identification cards of known passengers 2 3 4 Contents 1 Discovery 2 Cause 3 References 4 External links 5 See alsoDiscovery EditAfter intense unsuccessful searches for the remains of the aircraft both in air and on land in the area of the route towards Cuenca and other places like the Ozogoche area south of the Chimborazo province in the Ecuadorian coast and the Ecuadorian East neither the plane nor its occupants could be found Relatives of the victims sought supernatural explanations and asked for the help of psychics some even hinted at the theory of alien abduction The search was terminated without finding a single trace In October 2002 26 years after the accident mountaineers Pablo Chiquiza and Flavio Armas ascended a nearly unexplored face of the snowy mountain On the second day of search they ran up into the remains of the plane at 5 550 meters Impressed by such a finding they took samples of the cans and newspapers that in spite of the past 26 years were still legible They continued up the mountain but after climbing several additional meters they decided to turn around to stay overnight with the remains On the third day they descended down the mountain Months later on February 14 2003 widespread news of the plane s discovery by mountaineer Miguel Cazar who was interviewed by Teleamazonas revealed that they had seen both metal and human remains in the Garcia Moreno glacier of the Chimborazo volcano The mountaineers and discoverers Chiquiza and Armas accompanied by soldiers from Ecuador s Special Forces 9th Brigade Spanish Brigada de Fuerzas Especiales N 9 Patria arrived at the volcano to mark the exact site where they found the remains of the plane After reading the newspapers of the time and confirming with a document from the General Civil Aviation Directorate DAC obtained by retired Major Galo Arrieta they concluded that the plane still had not been found Arrieta established contact with Pablo Chiquiza during the two days of discovery and promised to help them with the investigation as well as the subsequent broadcast of the discovery as long as the first to hear of the news was then elected President Lucio Gutierrez 5 Therefore on December 23 of the same year Chiquiza and Armas ventured back up to the Chimborazo this time specifically looking for evidence such as personal artifacts or aircraft identifiers that could verify the presumed identity of the flight At the discretion of the climbers the search for human remains was laborious Nevertheless in spite of the snow that covered the area of the accident they succeeded in finding the identification document of one of the passengers With the said document they believed their search was sufficient and descended the mountain After turning over the document and other evidence of the plane to Arrieta the wait for the news release was longer than they expected According to the climbers Arrieta dragged his feet on the matter until finally after pressuring the colonel and not obtaining an interview with Lucio Gutierrez as they had been promised they obtained an interview with the minister of Defense Nelson Herrera who immediately ordered a military expedition be sent to the place of discovery and to spread the news Due to the delayed release of news regarding the discovery a series of investigations began under the authority of the National Congress 4 the police and the government According to Bernardo Abad a journalist for Teleamazonas they asked for thousands of dollars for the video Rodrigo Donoso delivered to the channel and its subsequent broadcast According to some photographers he also wanted to sell them photos for 100 dollars On their side Chiquiza and Armas presented another video in Canal Uno hours before Teleamazonas to refute that Donoso and his team were the head of the discovery Chiquiza Armas Donoso among others testified in Congress giving their versions to the district attorney s office as well On his side of the case Arrieta admitted that he knew of the discovery but according to him had to make sure the president Lucio Gutierrez was the first to find out and for this reason could not share the news with other people The families in spite of the pain and outrage of all these facts finally knew with near certainty what happened to the plane and where their loved ones lay Later by the suggestion of the military and the climbers Chiquiza and Armas the area where they found the remains was declared a holy field due to the difficulty of recovering all the bodies Cause EditSpeculation surrounding the existence of the flight data recorder FDR and the cockpit voice recorder CVR colloquially known as the black boxes but actually of orange color followed the discovery of the plane s remains as there is no certainty as to whether the plane carried both or either device In this line the DAC stated that no black boxes were aboard the aircraft however Patricio Mosquera a former SAETA Viscount pilot who flew HC ARS the day before its crash 6 and later led SAETA s own search for the plane 7 declared that it carried at least possibly the FDR which he claimed was mandated by DAC back in 1976 However Mosquera was not sure whether the Viscount carried the CVR claiming a long time had elapsed and did not remember it 6 Still the opinion that at least either of the two devices was onboard was echoed by Carlos Serrano former vice president of SAETA who claimed that when HC ARS and its twin HC AVP were bought from Alitalia in the early 1970s they carried both devices 6 In a tragic twist HC AVP also crashed in high ground flying the same Quito Cuenca route as Flight 011 on 23 April 1979 but its wreckage was only found 5 years later in the Amazonian jungle province of Pastaza 25 miles off course its original path and killing the five crew and 52 passengers 8 9 In the end the victims families agreement to declare the Flight 232 crash site a holy field meant that aside from ending the search for human remains and aircraft debris DAC pursued no official investigation of the tragedy and that neither the organization nor the Attorney s Office of Riobamba would search for it 6 Consequently the cause of the crash is not known References Edit UPI 12 September 1976 After a month plane still missing Ellensburg Daily Record Quito Ecuador p 5 Archived from the original on 30 May 2016 Retrieved 25 September 2016 Plane crash s frozen victims found 27 years later The Sydney Morning Herald Associated Press 19 February 2003 Archived from the original on 19 April 2015 Retrieved 31 May 2012 Restos de 59 victimas de accidente de avion descansaran entre la nieve www cronica com mx in Mexican Spanish Archived from the original on 12 September 2017 Retrieved 11 September 2017 a b Se confirma que hallazgo de avion fue el ano pasado It is confirmed that the discovery of the plane was last year in Spanish 21 February 2003 Archived from the original on 14 April 2016 Retrieved 23 May 2018 Ministro de Defensa y Galo Arrieta Minister of Defense and Galo Arrieta El Universo in Spanish 21 February 2003 Archived from the original on 10 April 2023 Retrieved 10 April 2023 a b c d Polemica por caja negra Controversy over black box El Universo in Spanish 22 February 2003 Archived from the original on 16 May 2023 Retrieved 20 May 2023 Viscount c n 377 operational record www vickersviscount net Archived from the original on 4 March 2016 Retrieved 20 May 2023 ASN Aircraft accident Vickers 785D Viscount HC AVP Pastaza Province aviation safety net Archived from the original on 22 March 2022 Retrieved 20 May 2023 Viscount c n 329 operational record www vickersviscount net Archived from the original on 10 June 2023 Retrieved 20 May 2023 External links EditDescription at Aviation Safety Network Hallaron en Ecuador un avion de pasajeros que se estrello hace 26 anos Se confirma que hallazgo de avion fue el ano pasado 367 muertos en accidentes aereos Junta Investigadora de Accidentes confirmo hallazgo de restos de avion perdido en 1976 Cronologia de Accidentes After a month plane still missing Plane crash s frozen victims found 27 years laterSee also EditAviation accidents and incidents List of deadliest aircraft accidents and incidents List of accidents and incidents involving commercial aircraft nbsp This article about an aviation accident is a stub You can help Wikipedia by expanding it vte Retrieved from https en wikipedia org w index php title SAETA Flight 232 amp oldid 1175302345, wikipedia, wiki, book, books, library,

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