Families arrive to mourn Venezuela air crash victims

By Patrick Markey

CARACAS, Venezuela (Reuters) – Scores of shell-shocked
relatives arrived in Venezuela on Friday to mourn victims of
the West Caribbean Airways crash and reclaim the remains of
loved ones lost in the country’s worst air disaster.

More than one hundred family members filed off an early
morning flight from Martinique to Maracaibo, where they were
met by French medics and relief workers who prepared them to
visit the morgue and attend a prayer ceremony.

Aviation experts are probing how the Colombian charter
airliner carrying tourists home to the French Caribbean island
from Panama plunged into a remote farm in western Venezuela on
Tuesday after reporting failure in both engines. All 160 people
on board were killed.

“This is a immense shock for France, and a terrible test
for Martinique, an eternal loss for all the families,” French
minister for overseas territories Francois Baroin told
reporters late Thursday in Maracaibo.

Most of the 152 passengers on the West Caribbean flight
were Martinique government officials on vacation with their
families. The dead included one baby and four children. The
eight crew members were Colombian citizens.

The French government says a second plane will take off
from Paris on Friday afternoon to bring hundreds more family
members to Martinique and then onto Venezuela.

Recovery workers have pulled most bodies from the scattered
remains of the MD-80 aircraft now strewn over muddy fields of
the cattle farm near Venezuela’s border with Colombia.

Authorities said on Thursday they had only identified three
bodies and many corpses were mutilated by the impact. Recovery
workers had taken more than 200 body bags from the crash site
and were using dental records and DNA to identify bodies.

On Thursday, prosecutors in Martinique were preparing to
open a manslaughter inquiry into the crash, a legal source
said, with the agreement of the French Justice Minister.

Venezuelan civil aviation investigators are working with
Colombian and French authorities to see if the flight data
recorder, cockpit voice recorder and tests will establish how
both the West Caribbean aircraft’s engines could have failed.

“What is left is to extract the engines and parts of the
aircraft … to start reconstruction. We have asked Colombia
for the pilot records and documents we need,” said Lt. Col.
Lorllys Ramos, head of the Venezuelan aviation investigation
unit.

West Caribbean’s safety and aircraft maintenance record has
come under increasing scrutiny. Colombian authorities have
suspended the airline’s flights while they review its
inspections.

The MD-82 airliner that crashed passed a Colombian safety
check on Monday and cleared two inspections while on French
territory. But West Caribbean has been fined before for safety
violations.

A recent audit by Colombian authorities found a lack of
crew training, incorrect use of flight logs and maintenance
problems. It also said the airline failed to properly check
routes or register flights and crew time, and that it exceeded
permitted flight times.

Eight passengers and crew died in March when an aircraft
belonging to West Caribbean, based in the Colombian city of
Medellin, crashed after takeoff.

Experts say investigators will focus on the flight data
recorder to pinpoint engine performance. Failure of one engine
is not unusual but it is rare for both to fail. That could
point to fuel starvation, fuel quality problems, maintenance or
crew handling of the engines, they said.