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TACA Flight 390
TACA Flight 390 was a scheduled flight on May 30, 2008, by TACA International from San Salvador, El Salvador, to Miami, Florida, United States, with intermediate stops at Tegucigalpa and San Pedro Sula in Honduras.[3] The aircraft, an Airbus A320-233, overran the runway after landing at Tegucigalpa's Toncontín International Airport and rolled out into a street, crashing into an embankment and smashing several cars in the process.[4][5] Aircraft and crew The aircraft was an Airbus A320-233 with c/n 1374. It was built in 2000 and entered service with TACA in 2001 as N465TA before re-registered as EI-TAF in 2006. The aircraft was leased twice to Cubana de Avación and Martinair in 2001 and 2007 respectively.[6][7] The flight crew included Salvadorans Captain Cesare Edoardo D'Antonio Mena (40) and First Officer Juan Rodolfo Artero Arevalo (26).[8][9] All cabin crew members operating on the flight were Hondurans. Captain D'Antonio had 11,899 flight hours, including 8,514 hours on the Airbus A320, and first officer Artero had 1,607 hours with 250 of them on the Airbus A320. Both pilots had previous experience in landing at Toncontín International Airport; captain D'Antonio had landed at the airport 52 times, and first officer Artero had landed there five times.[10] AccidentFlight 390 departed from San Salvador at 9:05 local time with 124 passengers and eleven crew. At 09:40, the flight landed on runway 02 at Toncontín International Airport. Although both thrust reversers were deployed and the spoilers were activated, the aircraft overshot the runway at a speed of 54 knots (62 mph; 100 km/h), crossed an embankment, and crashed into a road beside the airport.[1] A list of passengers was provided in the fifth press release on the crash from TACA international. This list was in the Spanish and English sections.[11] Five people died as a result of the accident, including Captain D'Antonio.[12] The deceased passengers were later confirmed as Jeanne Chantal Neele, the wife of Brian Michael Fraser Neele (Brazil's ambassador to Honduras, who was also on board), and Nicaraguan businessman Harry Brautigam, president of the Central American Bank for Economic Integration; Brautigam died from a heart attack.[13] Ambassador Fraser Neele sustained injuries in the crash. The former head of the Honduran armed forces was also injured. There were two fatalities on the ground, one a taxi driver, in one of three vehicles crushed on the street by the aircraft. One of the survivors said that the business class passengers sustained the most serious injuries.[2] InvestigationHonduran authorities delegated the investigation of the accident to the Civil Aviation Authority of El Salvador as per the Convention on International Civil Aviation.[14] The accident report stated that the airplane had landed with a 12-knot (22 km/h; 14 mph) tailwind, 400 metres (1,300 ft) from the displaced approach end of the runway. Since this was the first intermediate stop on a long transcontinental flight, the aircraft was near its maximum landing-weight limit (63.5 t vs. 64.5 t maximum allowable). In addition, the runway was wet, due to the passage of Tropical Storm Alma.[1][10] The Aviation Herald retrieved a copy of the final report in 2017, but the report itself was only made public when the Aviation Safety Network published a copy in 2024.[5] The Civil Aviation Authority concluded the cause of the accident was the flight crew's inappropriate decision to continue the landing despite not assessing the conditions of the runway, which did not follow standard operating procedures. The lack of grooving in the runway and the aircraft landing at a high speed of 160 knots (180 mph; 300 km/h) were also contributing factors.[10] See alsoReferences
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