Santa Bárbara Airlines Flight 518

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. Aircraft The aircraft involved was a 22 year old ATR-42-300, registered YV1449. The aircraft had the manufacturing number of 028 and had 37,138 total flight cycles. The aircraft was also equipped with 2 Pratt & Whitney Canada PW120 engines. Crew On the flight deck was Captain Aldino Garanito Gómez (36), a senior pilot for the airline and flight instructor with more than 5,000 flight hours logged, and First Officer Denis Ferreira Quintal (29), who had more than 2,000 flight hours. ==Flight history==

On 21 February 2008, Flight 518 was the last scheduled flight out of the airport, departing at about 17:00 local time. Shortly after take-off, the twin-turboprop slammed into a sheer rock wall called "Indian Face" (). No distress calls were received from the aircraft prior to impact. ==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. Civil defense regional chief Gerardo Rojas stated that rescue crews were racing to the poorly-accessible crash site in the Andes Mountains. Mountain villagers reported hearing a tremendous noise they thought could be from a crash soon after the disappearance and loss of contact with Flight 518. According to local police, the wreckage of the aircraft was located at Páramo de Mucuchíes, in the sector of Collao del Cóndor, Páramo Piedra Blanca, near the Laguna de la Perlada. The search operation was conducted from the regional hub city of Barinas in western Venezuela. Air-rescue services said that the airliner crashed 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, 22 February 2008. Fire-fighter Sgt. Jhonny Paz said officials believed there were no survivors and were 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. At the national civil aeronautical institute, General Ramón Vinas confirmed that, "by the type of impact, we presume that there are no survivors". ==Passengers==

As search-and-rescue activities were underway, local media published the passenger list of Sánta Barbara Airlines Flight 518. Most of the victims were Venezuelan; five Colombians and an American also died in the crash. Family members and friends of the victims created a website with information related to the crash and its victims. ==Investigation==

The cockpit voice recorder (CVR) was successfully recovered from the wreckage. Preliminary information released on 28 July 2008, indicates the crew departed Mérida with inoperative navigation equipment and subsequently became disoriented in the mountainous terrain surrounding the airport, crashing into the side of a mountain while trying to determine their location. Subsequent investigation concluded that the pilots took off without conducting the mandatory pre-flight procedures and used an unauthorised departure route. A report by LagAd Aviation determined that the cause of the accident was the omission or improper use of the checklists and procedures critical to the operation of the flight, causing the Attitude and Heading Reference System (AHRS) to not be initialized prior to the take-off roll. The pilots wanted to meet the schedule after experiencing some delays, including losing track of time while having coffee in the terminal, then finding that the passengers were already on board the plane. The time pressure was a factor that led the pilots to omit the use of the checklists and perform the pre-takeoff so fast that it was impossible to perform the necessary verification procedures to ensure safety. The second cause of the accident was the decision to take off when they had already become aware that the AHRS was inoperative, due to the overconfidence of the pilots, as the captain had avoided catastrophe on a previous flight when proceeding without AHRS from the same airport. ==In popular culture==

The crash of Flight 518 was covered in "28 Seconds To Survive", a Season 12 (2013) episode of the internationally syndicated Canadian TV documentary series Mayday. The documentary points out that the crash led authorities to deem the airport too dangerous for commercial flights, which were suspended. Commercial service resumed in 2014, after being suspended for five years. == References ==