Among the DC-9s in its fleet was LV-WEG, an early model DC-9 manufactured in the United States in 1969. By 1997, the core of its fleet consisted of several variants of the McDonnell Douglas DC-9 and its larger sibling, the MD-80 series. Since its founding in a merger in 1971, Austral Líneas Aéreas, a wholly owned subsidiary of Argentina’s flag carrier Aerolíneas Argentinas, has operated domestic flights within Argentina using a varied fleet of small jets and turboprops. LV-WEG, the DC-9 involved in the accident. But it was the story in between the lines that would endure for decades after the crash - a story that cut right into the heart of Argentina’s entire aviation system. It all began with the weather - and it ended with the first officer making an input that tore a wing apart in midair, sending the plane spiraling 30,000 feet down through the darkness as the crew fought a hopeless battle to save the lives of their passengers.
Could the storms have had something to do with the crash? After pulling the plane’s mangled black boxes out of the dirt, investigators discovered that the story was far more bizarre than anyone had anticipated. But the plane, operating a domestic flight within Argentina, was never supposed to be over Uruguay at all in fact it had deviated far to the east in attempt to avoid a line of thunderstorms. All 74 people on board were killed in what remains the worst air disaster in the history of both Uruguay and Argentina. The out of control DC-9 slammed into the ground at over 1,200 kilometers per hour, obliterating the plane and leaving a massive crater in the bush near the town of Fray Bentos. On the 10th of October 1997, an Argentine airliner bound for Buenos Aires suddenly plunged from the sky over the Uruguayan countryside. A massive crater was all that remained of Austral Líneas Aéreas flight 2553 after its terrifying death spiral over Fray Bentos.
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