Plane Carrying Mexico Soccer Fans Crashes

A plane chartered in Mexico crashed while approaching Dulles International Airport in a heavy fog Saturday, killing all 12 people aboard, U.S. officials said.

Carl W. Vogt, chairman of the National Transportation Safety Board, said the Lear jet had missed one approach to the airport and was attempting a second when it went down in a heavily wooded area on Dulles property.

“There’s no sense that anyone lived. There’s no one alive,” Vogt said at an afternoon news briefing at the airport. “The bodies are being taken out of the wreckage at this time.”

A makeshift morgue was set up nearby, and the bodies were to be transported to a Virginia medical examiner’s facility in northern Virginia, police spokesmen said.

Jose Henonin, a spokesman for the private, commercial chartering company TAESA in Mexico City, said the plane was an Executive Learjet with two crewmen and 10 passengers. He said the passengers were headed to Washington for World Cup soccer. The first-round match between Norway and Mexico was slated for today at Robert F. Kennedy Stadium.

Police and rescue workers with dogs combed the wreckage area, about four miles south of the airport’s main terminal. Bulldozers had to be brought in to clear a path for rescue teams.

NTSB officials said there was no sign of fire at the time of the crash.

Vogt said NTSB investigators would probably remain at the scene for at least three days.

“We will be conducting an on-site investigation,” he said. Vogt told reporters that information available to U.S. officials was sketchy, adding, “I am not going to speculate about what happened.”

Henonin said the flight originated in Mexico City, bound for Dulles, with a stop in New Orleans.

Vogt said the plane arrived in Chantilly about 6 a.m. EDT, was put in a 20-minute holding pattern by Dulles controllers and then attempted a landing.

“It was a missed approach,” he said. “It went around and tried a second approach” and crashed.