1987 Alianza Lima air disaster

The 1987 Alianza Lima air disaster took place on December 8, 1987, when a Peruvian Navy Fokker F27-400M chartered by Peruvian football club Alianza Lima plunged into the Pacific Ocean six miles short of its destination, off the Ventanilla District of the city of Callao. On board the flight were a total of 44 players, managers, staff, cheerleaders, and crewmembers, of whom only the pilot survived the accident. The team was returning from a Peruvian league match in Pucallpa. Uncomfortable with the malfunctioning indicator on his control panel, the pilot requested a flyby of the control tower at Lima's Jorge Chávez International Airport so that spotters on the ground could confirm that the plane's landing gear was down and locked. Upon receiving visual confirmation of safe configuration for landing, the plane went around for another attempt at a landing. The Fokker flew too low and plunged into the Pacific.

Following the crash, the Peruvian Navy shut itself off from the press, and did not release the results of its investigation nor did it allow private investigations to take place. Allegations were made that the accident had been caused by the aircraft's shoddy mechanical condition, and the Navy concealed the truth in order to save face amidst the chaos the country was enduring at the hands of the Sendero Luminoso terrorist movement. It was not until 2006 that a Peruvian television program revealed that the results of the official inquiry into the cause of the disaster had been concealed by the Peruvian Navy. The investigation cited the pilot's lack of night flying experience, his misreading of the emergency procedures related to the landing gear issue, and the aircraft's poor mechanical condition as contributing factors to the accident.

Aviation accidents and incidents

An aviation accident is defined by the Convention on International Civil Aviation Annex 13 as an occurrence associated with the operation of an aircraft, which takes place between the time any person boards the aircraft with the intention of flight until all such persons have disembarked, where a person is fatally or seriously injured, the aircraft sustains damage or structural failure or the aircraft is missing or is completely inaccessible. If the aircraft is destroyed or severely damaged so that it must be written off, it is further defined as a hull loss accident. Annex 13 further defines an aviation incident as an occurrence, other than an accident, associated with the operation of an aircraft which affects or could affect the safety of operation.

The first fatal aviation accident was the crash of a Rozière balloon near Wimereux, France, on June 15, 1785, killing its inventor Jean-François Pilâtre de Rozier as well as the other occupant, Pierre Romain. The first involving a powered aircraft was the crash of a Wright Model A aircraft at Fort Myer, Virginia, USA, on September 17, 1908, injuring its co-inventor and pilot, Orville Wright, and killing the passenger, Signal Corps Lieutenant Thomas Selfridge.

Alianza Lima

Club Alianza Lima is a Peruvian football club who plays at the Estadio Alejandro Villanueva in the La Victoria District of Lima, Peru. They are the second most famous and best supported club in the country and the oldest team in the Peruvian First Division.

Alianza enjoyed success throughout the first decades of their professional era. The club's success disappeared in the 1980s; in 1987, tragedy struck Alianza when the entire squad and coaching staff were killed in an airplane crash as the team was returning from an away fixture. The disaster worsened the title drought, which lasted until 1997. Alianza moved to its current stadium, named for Alejandro Villanueva, a player who is considered one of the most important Alianza strikers in the 1920s and 1930s.

The club is now one of the most successful teams of Peru along with its archrival Universitario de Deportes and powerhouse Sporting Cristal. It has won a total of 22 League titles of the Peruvian First Division. The club is the most popular side in Peru, a distinction shared with Universitario. Alianza last won the League championship in 2006 and came in as runner-up in the 2009 and 2011 editions of the tournament.

Lima

Lima /ˈliːmə/ is the capital and the largest city of Peru. It is located in the valleys of the Chillón, Rímac and Lurín rivers, in the central coastal part of the country, overlooking the Pacific Ocean. Together with the seaport of Callao, it forms a contiguous urban area known as the Lima Metropolitan Area. With a population of almost 10 million, Lima is the most populous metropolitan area of Peru, and the third largest city in the Americas (as defined by "city proper"), just behind São Paulo and Mexico City.

Lima was founded by Spanish conquistador Francisco Pizarro on January 18, 1535, as Ciudad de los Reyes. It became the capital and most important city in the Spanish Viceroyalty of Peru. Following the Peruvian War of Independence, it became the capital of the Republic of Peru. Today, around one-third of the Peruvian population lives in the metropolitan area.

Lima is home to one of the oldest higher learning institutions in the New World. The National University of San Marcos, founded on May 12 of 1551, during Spanish colonial regime, is the oldest continuously functioning university in the Americas.

Disaster

A disaster is a serious disruption of the functioning of a community or a society involving widespread human, material, economic or environmental losses and impacts, which exceeds the ability of the affected community or society to cope using its own resources.

In contemporary academia, disasters are seen as the consequence of inappropriately managed risk. These risks are the product of a combination of both hazards and vulnerability. Hazards that strike in areas with low vulnerability will never become disasters, as is the case in uninhabited regions.

Developing countries suffer the greatest costs when a disaster hits – more than 95 percent of all deaths caused by hazards occur in developing countries, and losses due to natural hazards are 20 times greater (as a percentage of GDP) in developing countries than in industrialized countries.

Etymology

The word disaster is derived from Middle French désastre and that from Old Italian disastro, which in turn comes from the Ancient Greek pejorative prefix δυσ-, (dus-) "bad" and ἀστήρ (aster), "star". The root of the word disaster ("bad star" in Greek) comes from an astrological sense of a calamity blamed on the position of planets.