West Caribbean Airways Flight 708 was a West Caribbean Airways charter flight which crashed in a mountainous region in northwest Venezuela on the morning of Tuesday, August 16, 2005, killing all 152 passengers and eight crew. The plane, a McDonnell Douglas MD-82, was en route from Tocumen International Airport (PTY) in Panama City, Panama to Martinique Aimé Césaire International Airport (FDF) in Fort-de-France, Martinique. The crash is the deadliest air disaster in the history of Venezuela and has the worldwide highest death toll of any aviation accident involving a McDonnell Douglas MD-82.
The pilots of Flight 708 reported trouble with one engine while discussing icing and later the other engine as well. They attempted to divert the plane to Maracaibo for an emergency landing. After a 7,000 feet per minute dive with engines in a flight idle or near flight idle condition, the plane crashed at about 03:45 local time (07:45 UTC) into a field on a cattle ranch near Machiques, in the western Zulia State, Venezuela (about 30 kilometres from the Colombian border).
Nearly all the passengers were French citizens from Martinique, with the exception of one Italian, acting as the tour operator. The crew was Colombian. The flight was chartered by the Globe Trotters de Rivière Salée travel agency in Martinique. Most of the passengers were tourists returning from a week's vacation in Panama.
Read more about West Caribbean Airways Flight 708: Background, Timeline, Aftermath and Investigation, Final Report, Dramatization
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