Mexican plane crash under investigation
Laurence Iliff
Issue date: 11/6/08 Section: Nation & World News
MEXICO CITY (MCT) - U.S. aviation officials joined their Mexican counterparts Wednesday in trying to determine what caused the crash of a government jet that killed two of the nation's top anti-drug officials and touched off speculation of a possible criminal role.
With unprecedented swiftness, Mexican authorities publicly played the conversations among the Learjet pilots and the control tower - those recorded in the "black box" - less than 24 hours after the Tuesday crash.
The conversations and radar tapes from the control tower showed the craft suddenly falling off the screen with no calls of alarm after what appeared to be a normal descent toward the capital's airport seven miles away, officials said.
Instead, the craft went into free-fall, slamming into parked cars just a block from rush-hour traffic along a major thoroughfare. All nine plane occupants and six people on the ground died.
Amid the chatter of suspicion on the Internet and across Mexican media, Communications and Transportation Minister Luis Tellez went out of his way to release what would normally be confidential data.
"Ladies and gentlemen, I would like to repeat once again that this is the first time in Mexican aviation history that we make public these radar images together with the voices and conversations between the control tower and the airplane," he said at a news conference.
"We cannot at this time reject the hypothesis that the plane crash was an accident."
U.S. Ambassador to Mexico Tony Garza said two U.S. Federal Aviation Administration investigators were in Mexico on other business at the time of the crash and rushed to the scene. More investigators arrived Wednesday.
Aboard the 10-passenger jet was Interior Minister Juan Camilo Mourino, a close friend of President Felipe Calderon, whose job responsibilities included the top national security issue - fighting powerful drug cartels and their paramilitary hit men.
The jet was returning from the central state of San Luis Potosi, where Mr. Mourino had signed a security agreement with the state government and greeted immigrants returning from the U.S.
With unprecedented swiftness, Mexican authorities publicly played the conversations among the Learjet pilots and the control tower - those recorded in the "black box" - less than 24 hours after the Tuesday crash.
The conversations and radar tapes from the control tower showed the craft suddenly falling off the screen with no calls of alarm after what appeared to be a normal descent toward the capital's airport seven miles away, officials said.
Instead, the craft went into free-fall, slamming into parked cars just a block from rush-hour traffic along a major thoroughfare. All nine plane occupants and six people on the ground died.
Amid the chatter of suspicion on the Internet and across Mexican media, Communications and Transportation Minister Luis Tellez went out of his way to release what would normally be confidential data.
"Ladies and gentlemen, I would like to repeat once again that this is the first time in Mexican aviation history that we make public these radar images together with the voices and conversations between the control tower and the airplane," he said at a news conference.
"We cannot at this time reject the hypothesis that the plane crash was an accident."
U.S. Ambassador to Mexico Tony Garza said two U.S. Federal Aviation Administration investigators were in Mexico on other business at the time of the crash and rushed to the scene. More investigators arrived Wednesday.
Aboard the 10-passenger jet was Interior Minister Juan Camilo Mourino, a close friend of President Felipe Calderon, whose job responsibilities included the top national security issue - fighting powerful drug cartels and their paramilitary hit men.
The jet was returning from the central state of San Luis Potosi, where Mr. Mourino had signed a security agreement with the state government and greeted immigrants returning from the U.S.
Be the first to comment on this story