Copa Airlines Flight 201
 CGI render of Copa Airlines flight 201 before it dived and broke up in mid-air in Darien. |
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| Occurrence summary | |
|---|---|
| Date | June 6, 1992 |
| Type | Faulty instrument readings |
| Site | Darién Gap, Panama |
| Passengers | 40 |
| Crew | 7 |
| Injuries | 0 |
| Fatalities | 47 |
| Survivors | 0 |
| Aircraft type | Boeing 737-204 Advanced[1] |
| Operator | Copa Airlines |
| Tail number | HP-1205 |
| Flight origin | Tocumen International Airport |
| Destination | Alfonso Bonilla Aragón International Airport |
Copa Airlines flight 201 was a Boeing 737-200 that was making a flight en-route from Tocumen International Airport in Panama City to Alfonso Bonilla Aragón International Airport in Cali, Colombia, on the night of June 6, 1992. Flight 201 flipped and crashed in the Darien Gap just minutes after its departure from the airport. The accident of Flight 201 is the most tragic airliner disaster in the history of Panamanian aviation, and the first and to date the only fatal disaster in the history of Copa Airlines in the last 50 years.[2] An investigation later determined that the flight crashed due to faulty instrument readings.
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[edit] The aircraft
The plane involved in the accident was a 12 year-old Boeing 737-204 Advanced with engines JT8D-15 of the American engine manufacturer Pratt & Whitney, which it was delivered by Boeing in February 18, 1980, for the now defunct British company Brittania Airways with the nickname of "Jean Baton" and the tail number as G-BGYL. They remained with the jet for 12 years, until April 17, 1992, when it was leased to the Panama´s flag carrier, Copa Airlines, with the tail number as HP-1205 and the Copa´s billboard livery (1990–1999) just one month and a half before the accident.
[edit] Story
On the night of June 6, 1992, the aircraft took off from Tocumen International Airport in Panama City for a flight to Cali, Colombia with 40 passengers and 7 crew.[2] Among its passengers were Colombian merchants conducting business in Panama.[2] Because of severe tropical storms, the pilot requested permission from Tocumen air traffic control to fly a different route, taking the plane over Darién Province. A few minutes later, the pilot radioed Tocumen air traffic control again, announcing his intention to return to his original route.[2]
Just seconds after the call to Tocumen air traffic control and passing the thunderstorms that were falling in the original route, flight 201 entered into a steep dive of an angle of 100 degrees to the right side and rolled uncontrolable to the ground, until it passed the speed of sound and as a consequence, the plane passed the speed limit to hold itself. The pilots tried to level up the aircraft as a desperate and heroic try to save the plane, but it crashed in a jungle area of the Darien Gap at the speed of 400 knots (460 miles per hour), killing all 47 passengers on board instantly.
Two minutes after this call, Tocumen air traffic control radioed again flight 201 but with no answers from the aircraft. Seconds later, the Tocumen ATC had realized that the contact was lost and declared a emergency. At dawn the next day, search aircraft were sent to Flight 201's last known position.[2] After 8 hours, searchers spotted the first piece of wreckage of the aircraft in the jungle of the Darien Gap. Because of the remote area and the difficult access where the crash occurred, it took rescue personnel 12 hours to reach the site itself,[2] and after they reached the crash site, the investigations begun to find the causes of the crash of the 737.
[edit] Investigation
The cockpit voice recorder was recovered and flown to Panama City, then flown to the United States for analysis by the National Transportation Safety Board.[2] However, NTSB analysts discovered that the tape was broken due to a maintenance error in the aircraft. Crash investigators had better luck with the flight data recorder, which showed the plane was in a high-speed dive before it broke up.[2] The trouble was later traced to a faulty wiring harness (cable) to the artificial horizon and attitude indicating instruments, which when failed caused the indicator to mislead the pilot into thinking he was going left, prompting him to bank to the right, that eventually rolled the aircraft and caused it to go into a steep dive, with no chance of recovery.[2]
A special team consisting of personnel from Copa Holdings, Boeing, Pratt & Whitney, and the NTSB worked together with Panamanian authorities on the investigation, which lasted for one year.[2]
[edit] Media coverage
A year after the crash, the story of the crash of Flight 201 and its investigation was featured on the PBS program NOVA.[2] It was Nova episode 389, originally aired on 30 November 1993 and repeated several times since.
[edit] See also
[edit] References
- ^ "HP-1205CMP COPA Boeing 737-204(A) - cn 22059 / ln 631 - Planespotters.net". planespotters.net. http://www.planespotters.net/Production_List/Boeing/737/22059.html. Retrieved 2008-09-06.
- ^ a b c d e f g h i j k "NOVA: The Mysterious Crash Of Flight 201". The Internet Movie Database. http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0957980/. Retrieved 2010-07-28.
[edit] External links
- PlaneCrashInfo.Com - COPA Flight 201 Entry
- Airliners.Net - Pictures of the plane when it was owned by Britannia Airways
- Accident description at the Aviation Safety Network
- AirDisaster.Com - COPA Flight 201 Entry
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