In Honduras, democracy crashed at a dangerous airport

[Judi Lynn]

In Honduras, democracy crashed at a dangerous airport
By Nick Miroff, Friday, November 22, 11:04 AM

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Built in the 1940s along a narrow ridge in the middle of the Honduras’s steep-sided capital, Toncontin has a precipitous approach and one of the world's shortest international airstrips at 6,112 feet (most runways at Washington’s Dulles International Airport are 10,000 feet or longer). It is known to pilots as a “visual landing,” meaning aircraft must be brought down manually, along a spiraling downward pattern, without the benefit of instruments or automated controls.

The final approach requires a hard, last-minute bank to the left, and commercial aircraft drop 1,200 feet per minute, a rate exceeding international aviation guidelines. The wheels pass so close to the rooftops and mountainsides below that they set off cockpit safety alarms, said Fernando Orellana, who has been landing at Toncontin for 24 years as a military then commercial pilot.

“There is very little margin for error,” he said.

And errors have been made. At least 10 planes have crashed in and around Toncontin since 1989, when a Boeing 727 operated by a Honduran carrier clipped the hillside on approach and burst into flames, killing 131. It remains the deadliest aviation accident in Central American history.

Toncontin’s inadequate runway and fear-inducing approach have been a drag on business development and tourism for Honduras. Yet the curse of Toncontin has proven more insidious. It has even brought down a president.

More:
http://www.washingtonpost.com/world/in-honduras-democracy-crashed-at-a-dangerous-airport/2013/11/22/1cc311d6-5382-11e3-9ee6-2580086d8254_story.html