“I was on fire when the plane stopped”: 32 years after the Tan-Sahsa air tragedy

Of the air accidents that shocked the world, Central America experienced a particular one in 1989 that shook the region tremendously due to the number of people who died. It was a cold October morning in Managua, the capital Nicaraguan, when flight 414 took off at 7:38 am from the Augusto C. Sandino International Airport, on a stopover from San José, Costa Rica, with a final destination in Tegucigalpa, Honduras.

Aboard the Boeing 727 operated by the company (already extinct) Tan-Sahsa 146 people were traveling: 138 passengers and eight crew members. The trip had proceeded normally. According to their own testimonies, some people slept and others talked with each other, as in any commercial flight.

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However, the problem occurred during the landing, which was scheduled on runway 1 of the Honduran airport, whose morphology is completely mountainous, so the descent procedure in these types of areas had a series of special protocols. The premise was based on three stages of a gradual reduction in altitude to gradually reach the mainland.

But the pilot Raul Argueta and his co-pilot Reinero Channels they skipped this prescribed rule and probably did not calculate that their decision would create a chaos of destruction (almost) total. It was thus that they began the descent continuously from an altitude of 2320 meters at a distance of approximately 20 kilometers from the Toncontin International Airport, well below what the manuals indicated.

“They told us to put on our seat belts to land and suddenly the plane began to shake, like turbulence in the air,” the Honduran businessman later said. Evenor López In an interview. And he continued: “But it continued for a long time, and it seemed that we were descending too fast. Some people were screaming. “

The tragic end

It was 7:53 in the morning when the plane from Tan-Sahsa It crashed into the Hula hill, located near the village of Las Mesitas and about 1,500 meters high. It was split into three. There were still nine kilometers of distance to the airport that the aircraft could never reach.

The impact and subsequent fire caused the death of 127 passengers and four crew members: only 15 of the people on board survived, including the pilot and co-pilot.

“I was asleep and when I woke up we were on the ground,” said one of the accident survivors later, Rosario Úbeda González. López, for his part, recalled: “I was on fire when the plane stopped. I tell you, i thought i was going to die. But I unbuckled my seatbelt and got out of the plane, everything was open “

The businessman also reported that once he was able to put out the fire that surrounded him and leave the ship, he moved away from the focus and walked to a house that was located approximately one block away from the accident site.

Among the fatal victims, 60 were of Nicaraguan nationality, 39 from Honduras and in relation to the rest there were citizens of the United States and other countries.

The day after

Subsequent reports regarding the cause of the accident targeted those who were operating the plane, as it resulted in a pilot error. Thus, any technical failure was ruled out.. In this way, both Argueta What Channels they were unable to fly. In fact, together with the flight engineer, Marco Esteban Figueroa, were imprisoned for one day and released on bail.

The tragedy that happened 32 years ago was then classified as the worst in the history of the area of Central America and it is to this day remembered in the area as a scar that will remain for life. In the records that remain of her, there is the book that a Nicaraguan survivor has just released about the accident.

A memorial commemorates the victims of the tragedy in the town of Las Mesitas. (Photo: Courtesy La Tribuna de Honduras).

Vivian Pellas is the author of “Turning tears into smiles, biography”, A play in which she tells how she and her husband survived the crash of the Tan-Sahsa. She is the founder of the Association Pro Burned Children of Nicaragua, which he created years after the sad event.

“I want to remind the world that your pain is less when you help other people“, he pointed Pellas, who was born in Havana Cuba, and in his book he also tells his story in relation to migration and then how he survived and changed his life forever.

Due to human, corporate or state agency negligence, this air tragedy is yet another in history that takes with it innocent people who probably did not expect to leave their entire lives in the air or in the cabin of an airplane.

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