Strong winds are now being viewed as a factor in the crash of a small plane in Costa Rica that killed all 10 U.S.. passengers on board and two local crew members, according to officials and witnesses.
The accident, which occurred Sunday in the country’s northwestern province of Guanacaste, which is popular with tourists seeking pristine tropical beaches, killed all on board the small Cessna 208 Caravan owned and operated by domestic airline Nature Air.
The plane burst into flames on impact, according to rescue officials and locals.
Costa Rica’s Civil Aviation agency said the pilots had tried to land at Punta Islita earlier Sunday to get the passengers but aborted their initial landing because of “the gusts of wind.”
The aircraft was up-to-date with its certifications and had been inspected a month earlier, the agency said.
“There had been a lot wind, really strong,” one resident in the area told AFP on Monday.
She said when she and other locals arrived at the crash site, up a steep hillside, “we couldn’t see. Absolutely everything was black.”
She added: “The front part of the plane was all on fire, and the tail part was the only bit intact.”
Police and fire crews arrived within 25 minutes of the crash, which happened shortly after midday (1800 GMT), she said.
Another resident, Efrain Rojas, told the newspaper La Nacion that the plane was “too low” after take-off.
“It did a turn to the left. For us, it looked like some sort of problem, and it was trying to get back to the runway. With the turn it did, it one of its wings was vertical, and the other hit the trees,” he said.
“When we arrived, it was all in flames…. The plane, when it came down, apparently exploded, caught fire,” he said.
‘All on fire’
The plane came down minutes after taking off from a small sealed airstrip in Punta Islita, a beachside town in Guanacaste, where the U.S. citizens had boarded.
The U.S. State Department confirmed the U.S. citizens’ deaths in an email on Monday.
“We express our condolences to all those affected by this tragedy,” the email read, adding that consular assistance was being extended.
A U.S. family of five from the town of Scarsdale, New York, was among the victims in the crash, U.S. media reported.
Bruce and Irene Steinberg and their three sons, William, Zachary and Matthew, were all killed while on a family vacation.
The other U.S. victims were named as Thibault Astruc, Amanda Geissler, Charles Palmer, Leslie Weiss and Sherry Wuu.
The Costa Rican pilot was Juan Manuel Retana, 52. He was the cousin of former Costa Rican president Laura Chinchilla, who spoke of their ties on Twitter. His co-pilot was Emma Ramos, also Costa Rican.
Guanacaste is a popular vacation destination, especially this time of year, when U.S. and European tourists arrive in bigger numbers for an end-of-year respite from the northern hemisphere’s winter.
Read more:
Plane crash causes still unknown in Costa Rica; pilot was cousin to ex-President Chinchilla
