Aeroperu Flight 603
N52AW, the aircraft involved in the accident, seen at Miami International Airport in January 1996.
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| Accident summary | |
|---|---|
| Date | 2 October 1996 |
| Summary | Maintenance error; instrument failure due to tape on the static ports. |
| Site |
Pacific Ocean near Pasamayo, Huaral, Peru |
| Passengers | 61 |
| Crew | 9 |
| Fatalities | 70 (all) |
| Survivors | 0 |
| Aircraft type | Boeing 757-23A |
| Operator | Aeroperú |
| Registration | N52AW |
| Flight origin |
Miami International Airport Miami, Florida, U.S. |
| Last stopover |
Jorge Chávez Int'l Airport Lima, Peru |
| Destination |
Comodoro Arturo Merino Benítez International Airport Santiago, Chile |
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Aeroperú Flight 603 was a scheduled flight from Miami International Airport in Miami, Florida (KMIA) to Comodoro Arturo Merino Benítez International Airport in Santiago, Chile (SCEL), with stopover in Peru. On 2 October 1996, the aircraft flying the final leg of the flight crashed, killing all 70 people aboard.
The pilots struggled to navigate the aircraft after the failure of several of its cockpit instruments. With the pilots unaware of their true altitude, the aircraft wing hit the water and it crashed shortly afterwards. The cause of the instrument failure was a maintenance worker's failure to remove tape covering the static ports necessary to provide correct instrument data to the cockpit.
On 1 October 1996, AeroPerú Flight 603 from Miami International Airport had landed at the Lima Airport. 180 passengers were on the first leg of the flight on a similar Boeing 757. 119 had disembarked, and the remaining passengers were transferred to another Boeing 757 after maintenance checks.
Just after midnight on 2 October, shortly after take-off, the Boeing 757 airliner crew discovered that their basic flight instruments were behaving erratically and reported receiving contradictory serial emergency messages from the flight management computer, including rudder ratio, mach speed trim, overspeed, underspeed and flying too low. The crew declared an emergency and requested an immediate return to the airport.
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