2011 Mexican Air Force AS332 crash

The air crash of Mexican Air Force AS 332 L2 helicopter TPH06 occurred on 11 November 2011, when a Eurocopter AS332 Super Puma with official registration AS332XC-UHP TPH06 crashed in a rural area near Santa Catarina Ayotzingo, in the municipality of Chalco, State of Mexico.

The aircraft, built in 1983 and due to be retired from service, was operated by three crew members of the Mexican Air Force. It left the presidential hangar at Mexico City International Airport at 07:23 local time (13:23 GMT) and headed to Campo Marte, where five passengers boarded. It took off from there at around 8:45 local time (14:45 GMT), after delays due to fog. Its destination was the city of Cuernavaca, Morelos. It was carrying eight people in total. At 08:55 local time (14:55 GMT) the craft disappeared from radar.

Among the passengers was Mexico's Secretary of the Interior, Francisco Blake Mora, who was to open the Sixth Ordinary General Assembly of the Mexican Association of Justice Administrators (AMIJ) at the World Trade Center in Xochitepec. At that event he was to be accompanied by the President of the Supreme Court of Justice of the Nation, Juan N. Silva Meza, and by the Governor of Morelos, Marco Adame Castillo. The ceremony was scheduled for 09:00 local time (15:00 GMT), but was held an hour later, owing to the delay of the Secretary of the Interior.

At approximately 11:11 local time (17:11 GMT) the helicopter was found destroyed.

At 12:30 local time (18:30 GMT) the spokeswoman for the Presidency of the Republic, Alejandra Sota Mirafuentes, announced the death of José Francisco Blake Mora and 7 other people who were travelling in Mexican Air Force helicopter TPH06, assigned to the Presidential General Staff.

Minutes before 15:00 local time (21:00 GMT), in an official message, President Felipe Calderón reported that he had instructed the Secretary of Communications and Transportation, Dionisio Pérez-Jácome Friscione, to form the working team charged with clarifying the facts with the best experts in the world. He noted that the helicopter had been kept under guard in the hangar of the Presidential General Staff, and that it had recently undergone maintenance. He alluded to cloud cover as a possible cause of the accident.

Dionisio Pérez-Jácome Friscione announced the formation of a committee with experts from the Bureau of Enquiry and Analysis for Civil Aviation Safety in France, the country where the helicopter was manufactured, from the National Transportation Agence Safety Board of the United States, as well as from the company Eurocopter.

Causes of the accident

On 9 November 2012, Gilberto López Meyer, director general of Aeropuertos y Servicios Auxiliares, presented the conclusions of the Secretariat of Communications and Transportation, which indicate that the main causes of the accident were due to an «inappropriate decision by the crew in command of the aircraft to continue the operation while conducting a flight under visual flight rules, despite encountering instrument flight conditions with poor or zero visibility, which led to a controlled flight into terrain (CFIT), resulting from a loss of situational awareness with respect to the elevations of the surrounding terrain».