Investigators Seek Clues at Site of Crash of Honduran Jetliner

TEGUCIGALPA, Honduras — Investigators from the National Transportation Safety Board arrived Sunday from the United States to investigate Saturday’s crash of a Boeing 727.

They went directly to the site of the crash, which killed 131 people. The plane’s flight recorder was flown to Washington for analysis.

A badly burned survivor said Sunday that the plane shook violently and seemed to plunge downward just before it crashed in flames into a hillside south of Tegucigalpa.

“They told us to put on our seat belts for landing, and then suddenly the plane began to shake, like air turbulence,” said Evenor Lopez, a Honduran businessman.

“But it went on for a long time, and we seemed to be descending too rapidly. Some people were screaming,” Lopez said in an interview.

The plane was operated by the Honduran airline TAN-SAHSA.

The U.S. Embassy said there were 15 Americans among the 146 aboard. Airline officials said three of the 15 survivors were American.

U.S. officials in Washington and Honduras issued partial lists of fatalities. They included U.S. Marine Gregory Paglia; Daniel Yurista, 37, Prairie Farms, Wis.; Eduardo Apodaca, 49, San Luis Obispo, Calif.; Maria Esther Apodaca, 50, San Luis Obispo, Calif.; Charles Friederich, Washington, D.C.; Robert Hebb, 42, U.S. Agency for International Development employee; Connie Montealegre, 68; Charles Kendall Morrow, Grandview, Mo.; Michael O’Shea, Costa Rica, and Mary Weaver.

Flight 414 crashed 25 miles south of Tegucigalpa while on a flight from San Jose, Costa Rica. It killed the Honduran minister of labor, Armando Blanco Paniagua. The U.S. survivors were identified as Kurt Shaeffer; Eugene Van Dyke, an employee of the U.S. Agency for International Development, and Deborah Browning of Washington, D.C.