Eastern Air Lines Flight 980
Eastern Air Lines Flight 980 was a scheduled international flight from Asunción, Paraguay, to Miami, Florida, United States. On January 1, 1985, while descending towards La Paz, Bolivia, for a scheduled stopover, the Boeing 727 jetliner struck Mount Illimani at an altitude of 19,600 feet (6,000 m), killing all 29 people on board.
An Eastern Boeing 727-200 similar to the one involved in the accident | |
| Accident | |
|---|---|
| Date | January 1, 1985 |
| Summary | Controlled flight into terrain for unknown reasons |
| Site | Mount Illimani, Bolivia 16°38′10″S 67°47′21″W |
| Aircraft | |
| Aircraft type | Boeing 727-225 Advanced |
| Operator | Eastern Air Lines |
| IATA flight No. | EA980 |
| ICAO flight No. | EAL980 |
| Call sign | EASTERN 980 |
| Registration | N819EA |
| Flight origin | President Stroessner International Airport, Asunción, Paraguay |
| 1st stopover | El Alto International Airport, La Paz, Bolivia |
| Last stopover | Simón Bolívar International Airport, Guayaquil, Ecuador |
| Destination | Miami International Airport, Florida, U.S. |
| Occupants | 29 |
| Passengers | 19 |
| Crew | 10 |
| Fatalities | 29 |
| Survivors | 0 |
The wreckage was scattered over a large area of a glacier covered with snow. Over the decades, several search expeditions were only able to recover a small amount of debris, and searches for the flight recorders were unsuccessful. The accident remains the highest-altitude controlled flight into terrain in commercial aviation history.
This article is issued from Wikipedia. The text is licensed under Creative Commons - Attribution - Sharealike. Additional terms may apply for the media files.