TANS Perú Flight 204

TANS Perú Flight 204 was a flight that crashed on August 23, 2005 near the Peruvian city of Pucallpa. 40 of the 98 people on board were killed.

TANS Perú Flight 204

OB-1809-P, the aircraft involved, photographed 3 weeks before the crash.
Accident
Date	23 August 2005
Summary	Controlled flight into terrain[1] due to pilot error in bad weather
Site	Pucallpa, Peru 8°25′0″S 74°35′45″W[2]: 6
Aircraft
Aircraft type	Boeing 737-244 Advanced
Operator	TANS Perú
IATA flight No.	TJ204
ICAO flight No.	ELV204
Call sign	Aereos Selva 204
Registration	OB-1809-P
Flight origin	Jorge Chávez Int'l Airport Lima, Peru
Stopover	Captain Rolden Int'l Airport Pucallpa, Peru
Destination	Crnl. FAP F. S. Vignetta Int'l Airport Iquitos, Peru
Occupants	98
Passengers	91
Crew	7
Fatalities	40
Survivors	58

The accident was the fifth most serious in August 2005, a dark month for commercial aviation, which also included, among others, the tragedies of Helios Airways Flight 522 and West Caribbean Flight 708.

Accident

Injury Map of TANS Peru Flight 204

Flight 204, carried out in a Boeing 737, left Lima's Jorge Chávez International Airport at 2:24 p.m. for a 53-minute flight to Pucallpa. At 14:52, the crew began the descent to the Pucallpa airport.

At that time, the weather conditions began to worsen, preventing a visual approach from being made. Conditions continued to worsen, however the pilots continued with the maneuver. Suddenly the plane entered a heavy hailstorm that caused the pilots to lose situational awareness and fail to abort the maneuver.

The plane finally crashed and split in two in the middle of the jungle at 15:09, just 5 kilometers from the airport.

40 of the people on the plane died. On board the aircraft were 73 Peruvians, 11 Americans, 4 Italians, 2 Brazilians, 1 Colombian, 1 Spanish and 1 Australian.

In television

Flight 204 has been the subject of a Reader's Digest story and an MSNBC documentary.^[3][4] The Canadian TV series, Air Crash Investigation, has also produced an episode about the accident named "Lack of Vision".^[5]