Argentine Jet Crashes, Killing Dozens and Dragging Cars in Trail of Flame

A Boeing 737 crashed during takeoff here Tuesday night, skidding through an airport fence, across a busy coastal avenue and into a riverfront golf course, where it erupted in flames. About 70 people were killed, and 30 survivors were being treated at local hospitals, according to initial statements from officials and media reports.

The jet, operated by Argentina’s LAPA regional airline and carrying a reported 100 passengers bound for the city of Cordoba, about 400 miles northwest of this capital, crashed at 9 p.m. at Jorge Newberry Air Park, whose urban location has prompted safety concerns. The plane got a few feet off the ground before going down and dragging cars and other objects in a nightmarish trail of debris and flame, witnesses and survivors said.

A few passengers ran from the wreckage, their clothes burning, and others were pulled out by golfers and bystanders. Two pilots and two flight attendants reportedly survived, but it was believed that most of the passengers died.

As has been the case after previous airline accidents and other tragedies in Argentina, however, officials were slow to provide casualty figures and other information. There was confusion about how many victims were passengers and how many were on the ground.

Although there was no official word on the cause, a survivor said that, when he boarded the jet, he saw maintenance men working on the left engine of LAPA Flight 3142 and that the flight was delayed about 20 minutes. The plane made it only a few feet into the air when it reached the end of the runway and crashed, the survivor, Fabian Nunez, told reporters at the scene.

“When we rose I heard a total silence as if the engines had failed totally, I look out the window, see all fire, and the plane fell,” said Nunez, who sat dazed near the smoking debris, his tie undone, his voice anguished.

Nunez said that he heard hideous sounds and screams and that seats were ripped from their moorings by the impact of the crash. He said he struggled for more than a minute to get his seat belt unbuckled as the inferno roared around him.

“People were falling among seats, people were burning, I couldn’t breathe, I couldn’t make it, I got to the door in back, and here I am,” Nunez said. “There were 10 or 15 people [who] got off. I pushed some people ahead of me, but most of the passengers burned up. . . . I feel like I was born again today.”

Newberry airport handles domestic flights and short-range international flights. It is scheduled to be phased out by 2005--with its flights being absorbed by the larger Ezeiza International Airport--as part of the ongoing privatization of Argentina’s airports. The rapidly growing air transportation system, like many in Latin America, has been criticized by pilots, air safety experts and others for deficiencies, disorganization and the use of outmoded equipment and aging aircraft purchased from other airlines.

Argentine television reported that the Boeing 737 that crashed Tuesday night began flying in 1970 and had previously been owned by British Airways and a French airline.

Newberry’s location also makes it particularly vulnerable: a heavily populated area by the Rio de la Plata River about 15 minutes from downtown. Safety concerns have caused periodic slowdowns and delays at the airport, where--as elsewhere in Argentina--air traffic is still managed by the air force.

In June, Guillermo Siri of the Assn. of Airline Pilots told reporters: “The air park’s setup has big operating deficiencies.”

The death toll in Tuesday night’s accident could be the worst in Argentine history. The last major crash occurred in October 1997, when an Austral airlines jet bound for Newberry went down in a storm over neighboring Uruguay, killing 74 people.