Viasa Flight 742 was an international, scheduled passenger flight from

Caracas Caracas (, ), officially Santiago de León de Caracas, abbreviated as CCS, is the capital and largest city of Venezuela, and the center of the Metropolitan Region of Caracas (or Greater Caracas). Caracas is located along the Guaire River in the ...

Venezuela Venezuela (; ), officially the Bolivarian Republic of Venezuela ( es, link=no, República Bolivariana de Venezuela), is a country on the northern coast of South America, consisting of a continental landmass and many islands and islets in th ...

Miami International Airport Miami International Airport , also known as MIA and historically as Wilcox Field, is the primary airport serving the greater Miami metropolitan area with over 1,000 daily flights to 167 domestic and international destinations, including most co ...

with an intermediate stopover in

Maracaibo, Venezuela ) , motto = "''Muy noble y leal''"(English: "Very noble and loyal") , anthem = , image_map = , mapsize = , map_alt = ...

that crashed on 16 March 1969. After taking off on the Maracaibo to Miami leg, the

DC-9 The McDonnell Douglas DC-9 is an American five-abreast single-aisle aircraft designed by the Douglas Aircraft Company. It was initially produced by the developer company as the Douglas DC-9 until August 1967 and then by McDonnell Douglas. After ...

-30 hit a series of power lines before crashing into the La Trinidad section of Maracaibo. All 84 people on board perished, as well as 71 on the ground.

Aircraft

The DC-9 involved in the crash was on lease from

Avensa Avensa (''Aerovías Venezolanas Sociedad Anonima'') was a Venezuelan airline headquartered in Caracas. It was in the process of financial restructuring, after it went into bankruptcy due to poor management in 2002, with Santa Barbara Airlines t ...

and had only been in service for a month. It was only three months old at the time of the accident and was powered by two Pratt & Whitney JT8D-7 turbofan engines.

Accident

The first leg of the flight, from Caracas to Maracaibo, carried 57 people; 42 passengers and 10 crew members. The flight crew of the first leg consisted of two captains: Harry Gibson and Emiliano Savelli Maldonado. The aircraft arrived at Maracaibo at 10:30. There captain Gibson disembarked and captain Maldonado became the pilot in command. The new first officer was Jose Gregorio Rodriguez Silva. 27 more passengers boarded the aircraft, which was loaded with of jet fuel. Flight 742 began its takeoff roll at 12:00. As the DC-9 headed toward Ziruma, it failed to gain altitude, and the plane's left engine struck a power pole. As the plane banked left, a reflector struck the fuel tank, spilling fuel. After hitting another power pole, the plane's left wing was ripped off the plane and the left engine exploded into flames. The plane crashed in a small park in La Trinidad. The impact was so hard that the right engine was torn off the plane and impacted a house.

Notable people

One of the people who perished in the Viasa Flight 742 crash was

San Francisco Giants The San Francisco Giants are an American professional baseball team based in San Francisco, California. The Giants compete in Major League Baseball (MLB) as a member club of the National League (NL) West division. Founded in 1883 as the New Yor ...

pitching prospect Néstor Chávez.

Investigation

The cause of the crash was attributed to faulty sensors along the runway and take-off calculations made from erroneous information, which resulted in the aircraft being overloaded by more than 5,000 pounds for the prevailing conditions. Only two days after the crash, Venezuela's Public Works Minister ascribed runway length as a contributing factor in the disaster.

Aftermath

Flight 742 was the first loss of a DC-9-30, and it remains the deadliest accident involving that type of aircraft. It was also the deadliest accident in Venezuela until

West Caribbean Airways Flight 708 West Caribbean Airways Flight 708 was a West Caribbean Airways charter flight that crashed in northwest Venezuela in the early hours of Tuesday, 16 August 2005, killing all 160 passengers and crew on board. The plane, a McDonnell Douglas MD-80, ...

(operated by a

McDonnell Douglas MD-80 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 gene ...

, the DC-9's successor aircraft) crashed over thirty-six years later. At the time, the crash was the world's deadliest civil air disaster. The fatality total was surpassed in 1971 by

All Nippon Airways Flight 58 All Nippon Airways (ANA) Flight 58 was a Japanese domestic flight from Sapporo to Tokyo, operated by All Nippon Airways (ANA). On 30 July 1971, at 02:04 local time, a Japan Air Self-Defense Force (JASDF) F-86F Sabre jet fighter collided with th ...

, which killed 162 people after colliding with an F-86 fighter jet.

References

{{Aviation accidents and incidents in 1969

742 __NOTOC__ Year 742 ( DCCXLII) was a common year starting on Monday (link will display the full calendar) of the Julian calendar. The denomination 742 for this year has been used since the early medieval period, when the Anno Domini calendar era ...

Aviation accidents and incidents in 1969 Aviation accidents and incidents in Venezuela Accidents and incidents involving the McDonnell Douglas DC-9 Airliner accidents and incidents caused by pilot error 1969 in Venezuela Maracaibo Zulia March 1969 events in South America