Santa Bárbara Airlines Flight 518

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**Santa Bárbara Airlines Flight 518**
Summary
A similar ATR 42
Date	February 21, 2008 (2008-02-21)
Type	TBD
Site	Venezuela 8°39′33.804″N, 71°14′17.307″W
Passengers	43
Crew	3
Fatalities	46
Survivors	0
Aircraft type	ATR 42-300
Operator	Santa Bárbara Airlines
Tail number	YV1449
Flight origin	Alberto Carnevalli Airport, Mérida, Venezuela
Destination	Simón Bolívar International Airport, Caracas, Venezuela

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Santa Bárbara Airlines Flight 518, was a ATR 42-300 twin-turboprop aircraft, registration YV1449, operating as a scheduled domestic flight from Mérida, Venezuela to Caracas that crashed into the side of a mountain on February 21, 2008, shortly after takeoff.^[1]^[2] Forty-three passengers were reportedly on board, with a crew of two pilots and a flight attendant.^[3] The wreckage was discovered a day later with no survivors.^[4]

1 Flight history
2 Crash site
3 Passengers
4 Aircraft information
5 References
6 External links

[edit] Flight history

Mérida, a university and tourist town located high in the Andes mountains, is surrounded by higher terrain, with night flights prohibited at the nearby Alberto Carnevalli Airport. On February 21, 2008, flight 518 was the last scheduled flight out of the airport, departing at about 17:00 local time. Shortly after take-off, the ATR 42-300 twin-turboprop slammed into a sheer 13,000-foot (4,000 m) rock wall called "Indian Face" (Spanish: La Cara del Indio). No distress calls were received from the aircraft prior to impact.^[5]^[6]

[edit] Crash site

Antonio Rivero, national director of civil defense, said rescuers had identified the site of the crash in the south-western state of Mérida. Unión Radio cited civil defense regional chief, Gerardo Rojas, as saying that rescue crews were racing to the poorly-accessible crash site in the Andes Mountains.^[7] Mountain villagers reported hearing a huge noise they thought could be a crash soon after the disappearance and loss of contact with flight 518. According to local police, the wreckage of the aircraft has been located at Páramo de Mucuchíes, in the sector of Collao del Cóndor, Páramo Piedra Blanca, near the Laguna de la Perlada. The search operation is being conducted from the regional hub city of Barinas in western Venezuela.

Air-rescue services said that the twin-turboprop ATR 42 crashed 10 kilometres (6.2 mi) from the mountain city of Mérida after take-off. Searchers spotted the wreckage of the plane carrying 43 passengers and 3 crew members in the mountains of western Venezuela on Friday, February 22. Fire-fighter Sgt. Jhonny Paz said officials believe there are no survivors and are sending a helicopter to the site of the accident after a refueling stop. "The impact was direct. The aircraft is practically pulverized," he told the Venezuelan television station Globovisión.^[8] At the national civil aeronautical institute, General Ramón Vinas confirmed that, "by the type of impact, we presume that there are no survivors".^[9]

[edit] Passengers

As search-and-rescue activities were underway, local media published the passenger list of Sánta Barbara Airlines flight 518.^[10]

Most of the passengers were Venezuelan; three Colombians and an American died in the crash.^[11]

Among the passengers were an anti-Chávez political analyst, Italo Luongo,^[4]^[12] and Alexander Quintero, the mayor of Mucuchíes, a small town in the state of Mérida, Quintero's 11-year old son, and two relatives of federal under-minister for civic security Tarek El Alssami.^[9] Vivian Guarch, a 53-year-old United States citizen and executive for Stanford Financial Group Bank, died in the crash.^[6]