VENEZUELA: A Colombian plane carrying 152 passengers and eight crew crashed in a remote area of western Venezuela early yesterday, killing everyone on board, officials said.
Airport authorities lost contact with the West Caribbean Airways aircraft shortly after the pilot reported engine problems. The airliner had taken off from Panama and was going to the Caribbean island of Martinique.
Over an hour in to the flight, at about 3am local time, the pilot told the control tower at Caracas's airport that he was having problems with one engine and that he would try to make an emergency landing. Minutes later the pilot reported the second engine had failed and the control tower then lost contact.
Venezuela's interior minister, Jesse Chacon, said that the jet fell from the sky at a rate of 2,000m a minute, estimating the time of the crash at about 3.30am local time.
The plane went down in Machiques, a remote zone in western Venezuela near the border with Colombia.
"The firefighters who responded to the crash have confirmed that there were no survivors," said Col Carlos Montealegre, the acting director of Colombia's civil aviation agency.
According to the agency, the passengers were from Martinique and the aircraft had been chartered for holidays in Panama. They were returning home. The crew was Colombian. Many French nationals were also thought to be aboard. Immediate rescue attempts were hampered by intense rain in the area.
The zone is so isolated from the rest of Venezuela that some of the first emergency workers to appear arrived by crossing the border from Colombia.
The Panamanian aviation authorities have said that they feared a number of families may have been on board as many of the passengers shared the same surnames.
In Paris, the Elysée Palace said French president Jacques Chirac, who is on holiday in the south of France, had learned "with very deep emotion of the appalling air disaster in Venezuela, in which a very great number of victims were French".
François Baroin, the minister for France's overseas territories, was to leave yesterday evening for Martinique.
The crash is another reminder of the perils of air travel in Latin America. The Andean region in the northern tip of South America is notorious for aircraft accidents with its large mountain ranges and strong air turbulence.
Colombian authorities are likely to review West Caribbean Airways' operations. The crash is the airline's second in six months; in March, a West Caribbean aircraft crashed as it tried to take off from Colombia's Caribbean island of Providence. Eight people were killed and six injured.
An official at Colombia's civil aviation authority said the authority had been concerned about the airline in the past but that this flight had met all the safety requirements.
West Caribbean Airlines was founded in 1998 and is based in the northwest city of Medellin, Colombia. The airline had taken advantage of the recent growth in air travel in Colombia to position itself as one of the country's low-cost airlines.
The French transport minister, Dominique Perben, said West Caribbean Airways had been running a charter service between Panama and the towns of Fort de France and Point à Pitre on the French Caribbean territories of Martinique and Guadeloupe.
Mr Perben added that French civil aviation authorities had checked the aircraft on two occasions since May and had found nothing out of the ordinary.
A crisis centre has been set up at the French foreign ministry, and Vincent Carmigniani, of the French civil aviation authority in Fort de France, said investigators from Paris would be dispatched to Venezuela and Martinique.
André Charpentier, the mayor of the Martinique town of Basse-Pointe, said 16 people from his town, including eight municipal employees, were among the dead.
"There were couples who went away, and so today there are children who are orphans," he told French television. "Every effort must now be directed towards them, to enable them to bear this catastrophe."
Mr Chirac's office said the president was in "permanent contact" with French prime minister Dominique de Villepin "to ensure that all possible measures are put in place on the spot with the Venezuelan authorities".
Mr de Villepin said his thoughts went "first to the victims and their families". He said: "I wish to express to them the solidarity of the entire nation and my most profound sympathy." - (Guardian service)