Aerolíneas Argentinas Flight 322 was a scheduled

Buenos Aires Buenos Aires ( or ; ), officially the Autonomous City of Buenos Aires ( es, link=no, Ciudad Autónoma de Buenos Aires), is the capital and primate city of Argentina. The city is located on the western shore of the Río de la Plata, on South ...

–

São Paulo São Paulo (, ; Portuguese for 'Saint Paul') is the most populous city in Brazil, and is the capital of the state of São Paulo, the most populous and wealthiest Brazilian state, located in the country's Southeast Region. Listed by the GaWC a ...

–

Port of Spain Port of Spain (Spanish: ''Puerto España''), officially the City of Port of Spain (also stylized Port-of-Spain), is the capital of Trinidad and Tobago and the third largest municipality, after Chaguanas and San Fernando. The city has a municip ...

–New York City international passenger service, operated with a

Comet 4 The de Havilland DH.106 Comet was the world's first commercial jet airliner. Developed and manufactured by de Havilland in the United Kingdom, the Comet 1 prototype first flew in 1949. It featured an aerodynamically clean design with four ...

, registration LV-AHR, that crashed during climbout on the early stages of its second leg, when it collided with tree tops shortly after

takeoff Takeoff is the phase of flight in which an aerospace vehicle leaves the ground and becomes airborne. For aircraft traveling vertically, this is known as liftoff. For aircraft that take off horizontally, this usually involves starting with a t ...

from Viracopos-Campinas International Airport on 23 November 1961. There were 52 fatalities, 40 of them passengers.

Flight history

The

jetliner A jet airliner or jetliner is an airliner powered by jet engines (passenger jet aircraft). Airliners usually have two or four jet engines; three-engined designs were popular in the 1970s but are less common today. Airliners are commonly clas ...

arrived from

Argentina Argentina (), officially the Argentine Republic ( es, link=no, República Argentina), is a country in the southern half of South America. Argentina covers an area of , making it the second-largest country in South America after Brazil, th ...

and landed at Viracopos-Campinas International Airport, north of

, as an intermediate stop. It took off at 05:38, bound for Piarco International Airport,

Trinidad Trinidad is the larger and more populous of the two major islands of Trinidad and Tobago. The island lies off the northeastern coast of Venezuela and sits on the continental shelf of South America. It is often referred to as the southernmos ...

, with New York City as its final destination. After reaching an altitude of about , the aircraft lost altitude, collided with

eucalyptus ''Eucalyptus'' () is a genus of over seven hundred species of flowering trees, shrubs or mallees in the myrtle family, Myrtaceae. Along with several other genera in the tribe Eucalypteae, including '' Corymbia'', they are commonly known as euca ...

trees and crashed into the ground; its fuel tanks exploded on impact. All 52 people on board were killed in the disaster.

Investigation

The accident was investigated by the Brazilian government with participation from the government of Argentina, the state of registry of the accident aircraft. The weather conditions at the time of the accident were "dark night due to 7/8 (broken) stratocumulus at and to 8/8 coverage (overcast) by altostratus at ." According to the Brazilian Air Ministry, the weather conditions did not contribute to the accident. The investigation revealed that the first officer was seated in the left seat of the flight deck, which the investigators saw as an indication that he was receiving flight instruction from the captain during the accident flight. The Brazilian Air Ministry determined the following Probable Cause:

It was presumed that the co-pilot was under flight instruction. If such was the case, the instructor, who was pilot-in-command, may have failed to brief or supervise the co-pilot properly.

The Argentinian government issued the following statement:

Argentina has determined, in the light of information it has gathered, that the cause of the accident was: "Failure to operate under
IFR In aviation, instrument flight rules (IFR) is one of two sets of regulations governing all aspects of civil aviation aircraft operations; the other is visual flight rules (VFR). The U.S. Federal Aviation Administration's (FAA) ''Instrument Fly ...
during a takeoff by night in weather conditions requiring IFR operation and failure to follow the climb procedure for this type of aircraft; a contributory cause was the lack of vigilance by the pilot-in-command during the operations."

Footnotes

Notes

References

External links

Brazilian Air Ministry accident report on prevac.com.ar
(Argentinian aviation safety website, in Spanish)
Archive
{{DEFAULTSORT:Aerolineas Argentinas Flight 322 1961 in Brazil Airliner accidents and incidents caused by pilot error Aviation accidents and incidents in 1961 Aviation accidents and incidents in Brazil Accidents and incidents involving the de Havilland Comet Aerolíneas Argentinas accidents and incidents November 1961 events in South America