Austral Líneas Aéreas Flight 046 was an

Argentine Argentines, Argentinians or Argentineans are people from Argentina. This connection may be residential, legal, historical, or cultural. For most Argentines, several (or all) of these connections exist and are collectively the source of their ...

scheduled domestic flight from

Buenos Aires Buenos Aires, controlled by the government of the Autonomous City of Buenos Aires, is the Capital city, capital and largest city of Argentina. It is located on the southwest of the Río de la Plata. Buenos Aires is classified as an Alpha− glob ...

to Posadas, via Resistencia, that undershot the runway at Libertador General José de San Martín Airport in Posadas on June 12, 1988, in conditions of poor visibility. All 22 of the occupants of flight 046 were killed in the crash.

Accident sequence

Flight 046, operated by a

McDonnell Douglas MD-81 The McDonnell Douglas MD-80 is a series of five-abreast single-aisle airliners developed by McDonnell Douglas. It was produced by the developer company until August 1997 and then by Boeing Commercial Airplanes. The MD-80 was the second gener ...

, departed Buenos Aires'

Aeroparque Jorge Newbery Jorge Newbery Airfield , commonly known as Aeroparque, is an international airport northwest of Buenos Aires Central Business District, downtown Buenos Aires, Argentina. The airport covers an area of and is operated by ''Aeropuertos Argentina ...

to Resistencia at 7:04 local time, and departed from Resistencia to Posadas at 8:40 after a 20-minute stopover. At 9:09, the crew of Flight 046 made radio contact with Posadas

air traffic control Air traffic control (ATC) is a service provided by ground-based air traffic controllers who direct aircraft on the ground and through a given section of controlled airspace, and can provide advisory services to aircraft in non-controlled air ...

, and 7 minutes later, the flight was cleared for an approach to

Runway In aviation, a runway is an elongated, rectangular surface designed for the landing and takeoff of an aircraft. Runways may be a human-made surface (often asphalt concrete, asphalt, concrete, or a mixture of both) or a natural surface (sod, ...

01. The weather at the time was very poor, with extremely dense fog reducing visibility to just 100 meters. Shortly after making contact with controllers at Posados Airport, the aircraft struck the top of a

eucalyptus ''Eucalyptus'' () is a genus of more than 700 species of flowering plants in the family Myrtaceae. Most species of ''Eucalyptus'' are trees, often Mallee (habit), mallees, and a few are shrubs. Along with several other genera in the tribe Eucalyp ...

tree, flipped on its side and crashed short of the runway. All on board perished and the aircraft was destroyed on impact.

Investigation

The investigation into the disaster, led by the

Junta de Investigación de Accidentes de Aviación Civil The Junta de Investigación de Accidentes de Aviación Civil (JIAAC), in English the Civil Aviation Accident Investigation Board, was an agency of Argentina under the purview of the Ministry of Transport of the Argentine Nation that investigated ai ...

(JIAAC) concluded that the main factor in the crash was that the crew attempted to land below the indicated minimum weather conditions for the

instrument approach In aviation, an instrument approach or instrument approach procedure (IAP) is a series of predetermined maneuvers for the orderly transfer of an aircraft operating under instrument flight rules from the beginning of the initial approach to a lan ...

. The crash had severely damaged both the Cockpit Voice and Flight Data Recorders, as the post crash fire rendered large portions of both recordings unusable. Small sections of the recordings were salvaged and analysed thoroughly by the Argentinian investigators. Analysis of the recovered cockpit voice recording revealed the first officers hesitation to land in extremely dense fog, as well as his dismay when realising the aircraft had descended below the

lowest safe altitude In aviation (particularly in air navigation), lowest safe altitude (LSALT) is an altitude that is at least 500 feet above any obstacle or terrain within a defined safety buffer region around a particular route that a pilot might fly. The safety buf ...

permitted for the approach. The JIAAC made recommendations to the

National Transportation Safety Board The National Transportation Safety Board (NTSB) is an independent U.S. government investigative agency responsible for civil transportation accident investigation. In this role, the NTSB investigates and reports on aviation accidents and inci ...

and

McDonnell Douglas McDonnell Douglas Corporation was a major American Aerospace manufacturer, aerospace manufacturing corporation and defense contractor, formed by the merger of McDonnell Aircraft and the Douglas Aircraft Company in 1967. Between then and its own ...

to improve the insulation of both recorders, and to strengthen the wiring that connects the cockpit area microphone to the actual cockpit voice recorder located in the

empennage The empennage ( or ), also known as the tail or tail assembly, is a structure at the rear of an aircraft that provides stability during flight, in a way similar to the feathers on an arrow.Crane, Dale: ''Dictionary of Aeronautical Terms, third ed ...

References

External links

Final ReportArchive
{{DEFAULTSORT:Austral Lineas Aereas Flight 46 Airliner accidents and incidents caused by pilot error Aviation accidents and incidents in 1988 Accidents and incidents involving the McDonnell Douglas MD-81 Aviation accidents and incidents in Argentina 1988 in Argentina June 1988 in South America