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Small commercial plane crash kills 14 in Honduras

14 February 2011 20:21 (UTC +04:00)

A small Honduran commercial airliner crashed Monday near the capital, killing all 14 people aboard, including a high government official and a union leader, authorities said.

The Central American Airlines plane was on a routinely scheduled daily flight, airline manager Felix Pacheco said.

The Let L-410 Turbolet plane was flying to the Toncontin international airport in the capital, Tegucigalpa, when it crashed Monday morning in the nearby town of Las Mesitas, about three miles (five kilometers) south of the airport.

The plane was carrying two pilots and 12 passengers, including Assistant Secretary for Public Works Rodolfo Rovelo and Jose Israel Salinas, leader of the United Workers Federation of Honduras, Pacheco said.

"I’m destroyed, in shock, because of what happened," Pacheco said.

A pilot survived the crash but died on the way to a hospital, firefighters spokesman Jaime Silva said.

There was fog in the area at the time of the accident, which may have affected visibility, Silva added.

Baku-APA. The National Service of Civil Aviation said the accident happened a little after 8 a.m. (8 a.m. EST; 1300 GMT), minutes after air traffic controllers instructed the pilots to land, APA reports quoting news.yahoo.com website.

Jorge Deras, mayor of the town of Santa Ana, near Las Mesitas, said he heard an explosion and ran to the crash site.

"We found many ... bodies strewn about," Deras said. "It’s a tragic vision."

It was only the second airline crash in the area since 1989, when a Honduran commercial jet went down, killing 131 people.