On 23 April 1979, SAETA Flight 011, a

Vickers Viscount The Vickers Viscount is a British medium-range turboprop airliner first flown in 1948 by Vickers-Armstrongs. A design requirement from the Brabazon Committee, it entered service in 1953 and was the first turboprop-powered airliner. The Visc ...

passenger aircraft of Ecuadorian airline

SAETA SAETA Air Ecuador (legally ''Sociedad Anónima Ecuatoriana de Transportes Aéreos S.A.'') was a privately held airline of Ecuador, which was founded in 1966. During its heyday in the 1990s, it flew to numerous destinations in North and South Ame ...

, crashed in a mountainous region of

Pastaza Province Pastaza () is a province in the Oriente of Ecuador located in the eastern jungle. The capital is Puyo, founded on May 12, 1899 and which has 36,700 inhabitants. The city is now accessible by paved roads, a recent development; the main road from ...

, Ecuador, killing all 57 people on board. The wreckage of the aircraft was not found until five years later.

Accident

Flight 011 departed at 7.08 am on 23 April from

Quito Quito (; qu, Kitu), formally San Francisco de Quito, is the capital and largest city of Ecuador, with an estimated population of 2.8 million in its urban area. It is also the capital of the province of Pichincha. Quito is located in a valley o ...

-Mariscal Sucre Airport,

Ecuador Ecuador ( ; ; Quechua: ''Ikwayur''; Shuar: ''Ecuador'' or ''Ekuatur''), officially the Republic of Ecuador ( es, República del Ecuador, which literally translates as "Republic of the Equator"; Quechua: ''Ikwadur Ripuwlika''; Shuar: ''Eku ...

, on a domestic flight to Cuenca Airport. The plane was cruising in cloud at an altitude of and was expected to arrive in Cuenca at 8 am. However, the plane disappeared from radar screens and never arrived at its destination.

Search and rescue Search and rescue (SAR) is the search for and provision of aid to people who are in distress or imminent danger. The general field of search and rescue includes many specialty sub-fields, typically determined by the type of terrain the search ...

operations were quickly started, but eventually abandoned after several days without finding any trace of the plane or its occupants. The mystery of the aircraft's disappearance gave birth to a theory published in ''The New York Times'' in November 1979, stating that the plane had been hijacked and flown to

Colombia Colombia (, ; ), officially the Republic of Colombia, is a country in South America with insular regions in North America—near Nicaragua's Caribbean coast—as well as in the Pacific Ocean. The Colombian mainland is bordered by the Car ...

to participate in the drug smuggling to the United States. The theory was disproved when the plane wreckage was discovered on a mountain slope at a height of 5500 meter (18045 feet) in the region of Shell-Mera, Pastaza Province, in 1984. It was only then, five years after the accident, that the fate of the missing aircraft and its occupants was solved. The cause of the accident was never determined.

Aircraft

The Vickers 785D Viscount involved, ''HC-AVP'' (msn 329) was built in 1957 and was used by SAETA from 23 June 1957 until its destruction in 1979.

Aftermath

The aircraft was destroyed in the crash killing all 57 people on board. An investigation of the accident revealed that the aircraft had deviated 46 km (29 miles) from its intented course to Cuenca. However, the cause of this deviation remains unknown.

References

{{Aviation accidents and incidents in 1979 SAETA accidents and incidents Airliner accidents and incidents with an unknown cause Airliner accidents and incidents involving controlled flight into terrain 1979 in Ecuador Aviation accidents and incidents in 1979 Accidents and incidents involving the Vickers Viscount Aviation accidents and incidents in Ecuador 1979 disasters in Ecuador