SAETA Flight 232

On 15 August 1976, SAETA Flight 232 en route from Quito, Ecuador to Cuenca was reported missing while in flight. The SAETA-operated Vickers Viscount 785D carried 55 passengers and four crew members. The snow-capped mountain Chimborazo, which is 150 kilometers from the capital and stands 6,319 meters above sea level, is thought to be a dangerous part of the route.

Searches of the possible crash area produced no results. A mid-route crash on the stratovolcano Chimborazo was considered to be most probable, though some speculated a guerrilla hijacking.

The pilot's last contact with the control tower reported that he was flying over the city of Ambato, but the station soon after lost all communication with the plane. As a result of the impact, the vessel was hidden amidst the snowy glacier of Chimborazo. The place of impact was declared a graveyard, and the remains were not recovered. The planes's remains were lost for 26 years, which led to a lot of speculation about why the plane and its people went missing, as well as some controversy when they were found again.

The plane was eventually found at 5,310 meters (17,420 feet) in October 2002 by two members of the Nuevos Horizontes mountaineering club, Pablo Chiquiza and Flavio Armas, while exploring a new route to the summit of Chimborazo via the García Moreno Glacier. However, they did not report it immediately. The discovery wasn't confirmed until February 2003, when a team hired by the television network Teleamazonas went up the volcano to record a video of the wreckage and found human remains, newspapers from the day the plane disappeared, and identification cards of known passengers.

Discovery

After intense, unsuccessful searches for the remains of the aircraft both in air and on land in the area of the route towards Cuenca and other places like the Ozogoche area, south of the Chimborazo province, in the Ecuadorian coast and the Ecuadorian East, neither the plane nor its occupants could be found. Relatives of the victims sought supernatural explanations and asked for the help of psychics; some even hinted at the theory of alien abduction. The search was terminated without finding a single trace.

In October 2002, 26 years after the accident, mountaineers Pablo Chíquiza and Flavio Armas ascended a nearly unexplored face of the snowy mountain. On the second day of search they ran up into the remains of the plane at 5,550 meters. Impressed by such a finding, they took samples of the cans and newspapers that, in spite of the past 26 years, were still legible. They continued up the mountain, but after climbing several additional meters, they decided to turn around to stay overnight with the remains. On the third day, they descended down the mountain.

Months later, on February 14, 2003, widespread news of the plane's discovery by mountaineer Miguel Cazar, who was interviewed by Teleamazonas, revealed that they had seen both metal and human remains in the García Moreno glacier of the Chimborazo volcano. The mountaineers and discoverers, Chíquiza and Armas, accompanied by soldiers from Ecuador's "Special Forces 9th Brigade" (), arrived at the volcano to mark the exact site where they found the remains of the plane.

After reading the newspapers of the time and confirming with a document from the General Civil Aviation Directorate (DAC) obtained by retired Major Galo Arrieta, they concluded that the plane still had not been found. Arrieta established contact with Pablo Chíquiza during the two days of discovery and promised to help them with the investigation, as well as the subsequent broadcast of the discovery, as long as the first to hear of the news was then-elected President Lucio Gutiérrez.

Therefore, on December 23 of the same year, Chíquiza and Armas ventured back up to the Chimborazo, this time specifically looking for evidence such as personal artifacts or aircraft identifiers that could verify the presumed identity of the flight. At the discretion of the climbers, the search for human remains was laborious. Nevertheless, in spite of the snow that covered the area of the accident, they succeeded in finding the identification document of one of the passengers. With the said document, they believed their search was sufficient and descended the mountain.

After turning over the document and other evidence of the plane to Arrieta, the wait for the news release was longer than they expected. According to the climbers, Arrieta "dragged his feet on the matter" until finally, after pressuring the colonel and not obtaining an interview with Lucio Gutiérrez as they had been promised, they obtained an interview with the minister of Defense, Nelson Herrera, who immediately ordered a military expedition be sent to the place of discovery and to spread the news.

Due to the delayed release of news regarding the discovery, a series of investigations began under the authority of the National Congress, the police, and the government. According to Bernardo Abad, a journalist for Teleamazonas, they asked for thousands of dollars for the video Rodrigo Donoso delivered to the channel and its subsequent broadcast. According to some photographers, he also wanted to sell them photos for 100 dollars.

On their side, Chíquiza and Armas presented another video in Canal Uno hours before Teleamazonas to refute that Donoso and his team were the head of the discovery. Chíquiza, Armas, Donoso, among others, testified in Congress, giving their versions to the district attorney's office as well. On his side of the case, Arrieta admitted that he knew of the discovery but, according to him, "had to make sure the president (Lucio Gutiérrez) was the first to find out and for this reason, could not share the news with other people."

The families, in spite of the pain and outrage of all these facts, finally knew with near certainty what happened to the plane and where their loved ones lay. Later, by the suggestion of the military and the climbers Chíquiza and Armas, the area where they found the remains was declared a holy field due to the difficulty of recovering all the bodies.

Cause

Speculation surrounding the existence of the flight data recorder (FDR) and the cockpit voice recorder (CVR), colloquially known as the "black boxes" (but actually of orange color) followed the discovery of the plane's remains, as there is no certainty as to whether the plane carried both or either device. In this line, the DAC stated that no black boxes were aboard the aircraft; however, Patricio Mosquera, a former SAETA Viscount pilot who flew HC-ARS the day before its crash and later led SAETA's own search for the plane, declared that it carried at least (possibly) the FDR, which he claimed was mandated by DAC back in 1976. However, Mosquera was not sure whether the Viscount carried the CVR, claiming a long time had elapsed and did not remember it.

Still, the opinion that at least either of the two devices was onboard was echoed by Carlos Serrano, former vice-president of SAETA, who claimed that when HC-ARS and its twin HC-AVP, were bought from Alitalia in the early 1970s, they carried both devices. In a tragic twist, HC-AVP also crashed in high ground flying the same Quito-Cuenca route (as Flight 011) on 23 April 1979, but its wreckage was only found 5 years later in the Amazonian jungle province of Pastaza, 25 miles off course its original path and killing the five crew and 52 passengers.

In the end, the victims' families' agreement to declare the Flight 232 crash site a holy field meant that, aside from ending the search for human remains and aircraft debris, DAC pursued no official investigation of the tragedy and that neither the organization nor the Attorney's Office of Riobamba would search for it. Consequently, the cause of the crash is not known.

References

External links

Description at Aviation Safety Network
* ttp://www.eluniverso.com/2003/02/21/0001/12/DDAB5EEFC28C4E5AB6E5ED8E122C46A5.html Se confirma que hallazgo de avión fue el año pasadobr>367 muertos en accidentes aéreos
* ttps://web.archive.org/web/20120509191038/http://www.fuerzaaerea.net/index_menu_Cronologia.htm Cronología de Accidentesbr>After a month, plane still missing

See also

* Aviation accidents and incidents
*List of deadliest aircraft accidents and incidents
*List of accidents and incidents involving commercial aircraft

Aviation accidents and incidents in 1976
Aviation accidents and incidents in Ecuador
Accidents and incidents involving the Vickers Viscount
232
1976 in Ecuador
1976 disasters in Ecuador

August 1976 events in North America
{{aviation-accident-stub