Flight 52 Crash Research Paper

Avianca Flight 52 crashed from fuel starvation, but there were a multitude of errors that led up to this crash, some being communication, crm, language barriers and command decision errors. Flight 52 left Jose Maria Cordova airport with enough fuel to fly to its final destination of JFK airport in New York and also to Boston airport as an alternate airport. The Boeing 707 landed at neither of these airports and finally crashed in a field killing 73 of the 158 people on board. (FAA.gov) The first factor that led to this crash was poor fuel planning. The 707 held three different times for a total of 87 minutes. (FAA.gov) During these multiple and extended holding patterns the crew failed to communicate effectively to ATC that they were beginning

The First Officer was handling all communications with ATC while the Captain seemed to not understand what was being communicated between the First Officer and ATC repeatedly. There was likely a language barrier with the Captain not understanding ATC instructions that were in English. The First Officer likely believed that ATC was giving them priority handling while this was not actually the case. After attempting an approach that ended in a missed approach due to windshear the Captain told the First Officer to advise ATC that they did not have fuel, which the First Officer replied he already had done. This information was not clearly stated to the TRACON which then vectored the aircraft back for a fifteen mile final. This was conveyed to the First Officer by ATC which replied that “I guess so thank you very much”, thus giving ATC the idea that they had fuel enough fuel to accept vectors to final. (Faa.gov) There were then multiple vectors given by ATC that had to be clarified by the Captain once again showing the language barrier. Shortly after flight 52 lost two engines due to fuel starvation. Avianca 52 lost all electrical power shortly after likely due to the loss of all engines.