Aeroperú Flight 603
| Occurrence | |
|---|---|
| Date | October 2 1996 |
| Summary | Error in maintenance |
| Site | Pasamayo, Peru |
| Aircraft type | Boeing 757-200 |
| Operator | AeroPeru |
| Registration | N52AW |
| Passengers | 61 |
| Crew | 9 |
| Fatalities | 70 |
| Injuries | 0 |
| Survivors | 0 |
AeroPeru Flight 603 was a scheduled Lima(LIM)-Santiago (SCL) flight which crashed on October 2, 1996.
On October 2, 1996, just past midnight, the Boeing 757 airliner crew, shortly after takeoff, reported receiving contradictory emergency messages, such as rudder ratio, overspeed, underspeed and flying too low, from the onboard computer; asked for an emergency to be declared and decided to return to base. Faced with the contradictory warnings, the pilot decided to descend. It was only when one wing touched water, almost an hour after emergency declaration, that the pilots realized how confused and disoriented they were. All nine crew members and sixty-one passengers died.
As the subsequent investigation proved, the primary cause of the crash was the masking tape left over the static ports after cleaning the aircraft — an error by the maintenance crew. The static ports need to be cleared since they are particularly necessary for altitude data. This put the pilots in a very confusing situation with conflicting and false flight data, which affected even the ability of ground radar to assist. The investigation put the responsibility on the flight deck crew since they did not react in the best possible way, and tried to return to Lima, something impossible under VFR (visual flight rules), the only way to do it without accurate data from the instruments.
Rumors abounded that the crash was caused by sabotage because supposedly the Peruvian Mafia wanted one of the passengers (a prisoner who was being extradited to Argentina) dead. Those rumors were never confirmed. The official leading the Peruvian investigation lost a nephew (the ill-fated flight's First Officer) in the crash. It has been stated by coroners that some passengers survived the crash but drowned afterwards. Also, it is perfectly clear that the passengers and crew were aware during their time in the air that the plane was in danger and that their lives were at risk.
Peruvian justice only sentenced the actual maintenance technician that had left the tape on the pitot tubes, while not apportioning blame on supervisors for poor procedures and the crew for inadequate pre-flight checkups.
The Flight 603 incident contributed to the demise of AeroPeru, which was already plagued with financial and management difficulties. The airline folded in the late 1990s.