A TAM Ecuador (TAME) Boeing 737-100 crashed into high ground around 20min after take-off on the 40min flight from Quito, Ecuador to Tulcan on 28 January. It was one of a number of events last month, with incidents in Anchorage and Omsk.
Military-operated TAME has released little information about the flight, which was carrying 88 passengers and seven crew. Built in 1967, the Pratt & Whitney JT8D-9A-powered aircraft (HC-BLF) had accumulated nearly 64,000h and 50,000 flight cycles. The 727's wreckage was found on the slopes of the 4,750m (15,700ft) Mt Chilo on the Ecuador/Colombia border. TAME last suffered a 727 high- ground collision in 1998 on a flight from Bogot , Colombia.
Meanwhile, a China Airlines Airbus A340 bound for Taipei, Taiwan, with 252 people on board, took off from a taxiway at Anchorage by mistake. The aircraft scraped the top of snowdrifts at the far end of the taxiway. The route from the airport terminal to take-off on runway 32 involved taxiing south-east on taxiway R, then turning right onto taxiway K which heads south-west (240º), and right again onto runway 32. The crew, however, made only the first right-turn and used taxiway K to take off, having 2,100m for the take-off roll. China Airlines has suspended the three pilots while it conducts investigations. A Sibir Airlines TupolevTu-204 lost both engines in bad weather on a diversion to Omsk, during a 14 January Frankfurt-Novosibirsk flight. On approach to Omsk, the aircraft's Perm engines began to lose power as the aircraft was descending through 3,300ft. The crew landed on the ice-covered runway within 100m of the threshold, but the aircraft overran by more than 400m None of the 14 crew and 145 passengers was hurt.Source: Flight International
