Tegucigalpa TACA Plane Crash Photos

I was at work when it happened so as soon as I heard about it, I began surfing the local newspapers' websites, looking for photos or stories. I don't know how long it was after the crash that the embassy had been informed about it, but it was less than an hour post-crash, as I was hunting for information online and not finding anything, a group of American consular employees wearing cute matching vests raced out the door.

I don't think I've ever been as jealous of anybody as I was right then. Here I was uselessly browsing the crappy local news and here they were, HEADING OUT TO THE PLANE! I thought my skull was going to explode with envy.

Eventually news stories started popping up (with terrible-quality photographs mind you) but at least I could figure out what was going on. A little while later we found out that one of the Marines' girlfriends had been on the plane and was now in the hospital with a broken arm. She's actually a TACA flight attendant but she was flying home as a passenger on this flight. They told me that she said nobody was screaming as the plane fell off the runway, it was completely silent. Afterwards, the woman next to her was covered in blood, the man on her other side was begging her for help, and the guys in next row were fighting each other to get off the plane first.

Later on after work I was in the car with the Boyfriend driving somewhere, and he said, "Hey, you want to go see the plane?"

I felt like a moron. WHY DIDN'T I THINK OF THAT??
So we went to see the plane, even though it was dark already.

First, here's an overview of the city so you can see where the airport is:


If you look up and to the right of that empty hill, almost in the exact middle below the far mountain, there's a tiny grayish square. That's the runway. (If you click on this photo, it links to the bigger version so you can see it better)



Here is a different, closer photo. The end of the airport closest to the stadium is where the plane crashed. (Click for a giant photo!) These two photos I took awhile back from on top of a nearby mountain.

And finally, here's one from the BBC,
since I didn't have access to a helicopter:


We showed up at the crash site and everybody was watching from a low overpass. Some geniuses apparently decided to set up beer tents and sell refreshments to the onlookers:


The plane's TACA logo tail is on the left. The dark shadow on the right above the tent is where the runway ends. In between is the hill from the runway to the top road and then the hill leading down to the second road where the plane landed.



Here you can see how close the plane was to where we were watching from.



There were still a bunch of people working that night.



A close-up of the front end.



Here's one of the inflatable slides!



The smashed-up landing gear.



You can see the seats just inside the emergency exits over the wing.



The nose is all smooshed up into that building.



See that billboard? It says: "Tow Truck Rental"

How...um...appropriate.

Moving on to Sunday afternoon now...I HAD to get pictures during daylight so I dragged the Boyfriend to the airport again and he was rewarded with a drenching downpour on the walk back to the car! Poor guy.


This time we came from the other direction. That big black thing is the tail. On the right is the hill below the long side of the runway.



Here we were on the top road.
Looking to the right is the hill at the end of the runway....

...and looking to the left, down towards the lower road, you see this:

By now they had covered up the tail with black plastic.

A lot of the English news articles said the airplane "slid off the runway". Saying the plane "slid off the runway" is misleading. I think "sliding off" implies that there is something to slid off onto, like a nice grassy field. This plane FELL OFF the runway, no? Or maybe SAILED off the runway and FELL into a hole.



Farther down that top road, you can see how the plane crash-landed and broke in pieces to fit the curve of the land. You can also see the power lines the plane took out on its way down.



The tail end, with another now-deflated inflatable slide.



The middle, with the totally destroyed right engine.



And the front, where you can see the location of the fire.



I was reading in the news yesterday that the TACA crash is now the most popular attraction in the city. They said thousands of people go to see it every day.

They also said that the plane will be left in place for at least a month while they investigate what happened. So far, people are saying that the pilot had only landed here a couple times before and after making one attempt, on the second try he landed too far down the runway to stop the plane before running out of pavement. But he's dead now so we can't ask him.

Did you notice in the second group of photos how the tail is completely covered in black plastic, and all the sections of taped-up plastic on other parts of the plane? At first I thought maybe they were covering up holes but the tail didn't have any holes.

Then we realized what they were up to: they were covering up every single place the "TACA" logo was painted on the plane.