1938 Santa Ana air show disaster
Colombian Air Force Curtiss Hawk II · Pilot error
Event
- Event typeAccident: someone killed or seriously injured, or the aircraft substantially damaged (NTSB definition). Incident: an occurrence that affected or could have affected safety, short of that. Glossary
- Accident
- Event fatalities
- 53 · all aircraft and ground
- Ground fatalities
- Unknown
- Occupants
- Unknown
- Survivors
- Unknown
- InjuriesFatal: death within 30 days. Serious: over 48 hours in hospital within a week, most broken bones, severe bleeding, nerve or organ damage, or serious burns. Minor: anything less. Glossary
- About 100
- OperationWhat kind of flying it was, grouped by the rules it flew under: airline (US Part 121), air taxi and commuter (Part 135), general aviation (Part 91 and similar), military or government. Glossary
- Military
Curtiss Hawk II
- Aircraft type
- Curtiss HAWK
- Category
- Airplane · from aircraft type
- RegistrationThe aircraft's tail number, such as N12345 or G-ABCD. Registrations are reissued, so the same one years apart can be a different aircraft. Glossary
- Unknown
- Operator
- Colombian Air Force
- Onboard fatalities
- 53
- Route
- From not recordedTo not recorded
Approximate · Coordinates from the Wikipedia article; not checked against an investigation report.
From the Wikipedia article
The 1938 Santa Ana air show disaster occurred on 24 July 1938 at a military review on the Campo de Marte in the Santa Ana district of Bogotá, Colombia. During the review, a Curtiss Hawk II biplane of the Colombian Air Force piloted by Lieutenant César Abadia performed a stunt before crashing into a grandstand and then into the crowd.
The pilot attempted to fly between the presidential stand and the stand for diplomats when he miscalculated the distance and the aircraft's wing-tip struck the diplomatic stand. The Hawk II destroyed part of the roof of the presidential stand and then careened through the crowd bursting into flames before it came to a stop upside down. Over fifty people, including civilians and soldiers were killed, and over a hundred injured. Among those in the presidential stand but uninjured were the outgoing Colombian President Alfonso López Pumarejo and his successor Eduardo Santos. Among the wounded was Misael Pastrana Borrero, a future president of Colombia.
Text from the Wikipedia article “1938 Santa Ana air show disaster” (revision 1360260384, retrieved 2026-09-18) by its authors, under CC BY-SA 4.0. Extracted as plain text: references, tables, images and some sections are left out. Read the article
Sources
Wikipedia article: 1938 Santa Ana air show disaster
- Revision
- 1360260384 · 2026-06-20 · retrieved 2026-09-18
- Wikidata
- Q8186780
- Licence
- Text CC BY-SA 4.0, by the article's authors; Wikidata CC0; town positions GeoNames (CC BY 4.0)
Where each value comes from
- Record
- Wikipedia article "1938 Santa Ana air show disaster" (page 41871689, revision 1360260384)
- Date
- Wikipedia infobox: date
- Place and country
- Wikipedia infobox: site
- Map position
- Wikipedia article coordinates
- Aircraft, operator and route
- Wikipedia infobox: aircraft type, registration, operator, origin and destination; route airports from the linked airport articles' Wikidata codes (OurAirports)
- Operation
- operator named as an armed force or military unit in the infobox
- Fatalities
- Wikipedia infobox: aircraft fatalities
- Ground fatalities
- not stated in the Wikipedia infobox
- Summary
- Wikipedia infobox: summary
Source notes (1)
- Wikipedia · Facts from the Wikipedia article's infobox and coordinates, not checked against an investigation report. Independent review pending.