Venezuelan investigators picked through the shattered wreckage of a plane that crashed with 160 people on board, trying to determine what caused the engines to fail and sent the jet plunging from the sky in the country's deadliest air disaster in history.
The pilot radioed authorities saying both engines had failed and requested permission for an emergency landing yesterday shortly before the West Caribbean Airways plane plummeted to the ground, killing all aboard, officials said. Authorities have found one of the two black box data recorders from the charter jet.
Seats, pillows, and smouldering wreckage were strewn across a pasture dotted with trees among cattle ranches near the border with Colombia. The plane's tail jutted from the ground.
Sombre-faced rescue workers collected body parts and pieces of bone amid bloodstained clothes that lay near charred trees.
The crash was the deadliest in Venezuelan history, according to the Aviation Safety Network, a non-profit group that keeps a database of air disasters. It said the death toll surpassed a 1969 crash in Venezuela that killed 155, including 71 victims on the ground.
"I was struck by all of the victims and the massive destruction," said rescue worker Jose Pena. The cockpit voice recorder has not yet been found. As the plane developed problems hours before dawn yesterday, the Colombian pilot radioed a nearby airport in Maracaibo requesting permission to descend from 33,000 feet to 14,000 feet, said Venezuelan Interior Minister Jesse Chacon.
Investigators believe the McDonnell Douglas MD-82 fell into a steep descent minutes later, plunging about 7,000 feet a minute before slamming into the ground, Mr Chacon said.
Residents reported hearing an explosion when the plane went down east of the Sierra de Perija mountains near Machiques, about 400 miles west of Caracas.
The jet was carrying 152 tourists from Martinique, including a 21-month-old infant, returning home after a week in Panama, officials said. All eight Colombian crew members were killed.