Crash
After defeating Deportivo Pucallpa by 1-0 in an away match for the Peruvian league on December 8, Alianza had moved into first place of the league table. The team returned to its hotel and immediately prepared their effects for the trip back to Lima. The club had organized a charter aircraft, provided by the Air Services branch of the Peruvian Navy (Servicio Aeronaval de la Marina del Peru) for the trip to Pucallpa and back. The aircraft was a Fokker F27-400M Friendship, registration AE-560, captained by Peruvian Navy Lieutenant Edilberto Villar. The aircraft, with serial number 10548, had first flown in 1977, and had logged a total of 5908 hours.
The aircraft, carrying sixteen footballers, five coaching staff, four directors, eight cheerleaders, three referees, two Navy personnel, and six crewmembers, took off from FAP Captain David Abenzur Rengifo International Airport in Pucallpa at 6:30 in the afternoon. As the pilots began their descent into Lima, they noticed that they could not confirm that the Fokker's landing gear was down and locked. The aircraft requested a flyby of the control tower at Jorge Chavez airport so that observers on the ground could confirm that the wheels were down. The observers confirmed that the airplane was configured for landing; at the aircraft mechanic's go-ahead, the pilot brought the aircraft around for another attempt at a landing. The aircraft flew too low to the water, and the right wing struck the surface of the ocean as the plane was lining up with the runway. The Fokker plunged into the water 6.9 miles (11 km) northwest of the airport. At 8:05 PM, the control tower lost contact with the aircraft. A state of emergency was declared, but search and rescue teams couldn't start the search. All the rescue vehicles were out of fuel because corrupt officers sold the daily quote in the black market. Due to this, the search of survivors started at the morning of the next day. As soon as the pilot of the plane Edilberto Villar was found, the search and rescue teams started to give up on looking for the rest of the passengers
The Jorge Chavez Airport staff didn't give any information about the accident, some even started spreading misleading information. The initial report given by the Airport Staff was that the airplane stayed at Pucalpa due bad weather.
Read more about this topic: 1987 Alianza Lima Air Disaster
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