Austral Líneas Aéreas Flight 205

Content sourced from Wikipedia, licensed under CC BY-SA 3.0.

Austral Líneas Aéreas Flight 205 was a domestic flight from Buenos Aires to Mar del Plata in Argentina. On 16 January 1959, a Curtiss C-46A Commando (registration LV-GED) carrying 52 people (47 passengers and 5 crew) crashed while attempting to land in poor weather off Mar del Plata. The plane had left Buenos Aires at 7:50 p.m. local time and had been delayed 35 minutes due to bad weather at the destination. On approach, the airport’s radio beacon was not working. The aircraft passed the runway at about 85 meters (279 feet) high and overshot. The captain initiated a go-around, but in heavy fog and with poor runway lighting the plane stalled and crashed into the sea about 1.2 kilometers (0.75 miles) from the airport at 9:40 p.m. All but one aboard died: 51 fatalities and 1 survivor. The survivor, Roberto Servente, spent four hours in the sea before reaching shore; he later became Austral’s director and died in 2014 at age 93. Investigators blamed the crash mainly on the crew: the pilot was not familiar with the area and misjudged the instrument approach, and the crew’s mental state contributed to the stall. Contributing factors included the non-working radio beacon and poor visibility making it hard to see the airport lights.