Plane Crash at Tegucigalpa's Notorious Toncontin Airport
TEGUCIGALPA, Honduras: A TACA airplane overshot the runway at Tegucigalpa's Toncontin International Airport Friday, killing 7; among them were the plane's pilot, the president of the Central American Bank for Economic Integration, and the former head of Honduras's armed forces. More than 80 were injured. According to CNN.com, the plane skidded into a city street, spilling 2,000 gallons of jet fuel.
What a tragedy. Toncontin International Airport in Tegucigalpa, Honduras, is infamously recognized as one of the world's most dangerous airports. Pilots swoop around mountainous terrain before landing on a short runway. It's not uncommon for passengers landing in Tegucigalpa to clap and cheer once the plane comes to a halt. (Watch a YouTube video of a plane landing at Toncontin.) In this case, weather was likely a factor, as spring rains muddied the ground and shrouded the Honduras capital city in fog.
Toncontin isn't the only international airport in Honduras. San Pedro Sula also serves Delta, American and Continental flights, as well as TACA and COPA. So if you want to avoid Toncontin's stigma when flying into Honduras (like I do), book a flight there instead.
Landing at San Pedro Sula just doesn’t work if you need to go to central or Western Honduras or to Tegucigalpa itself. Maybe flying into San Pedro Sula, then taking a smaller plane into Teguc is a good idea, though. Easier to land the smaller planes on the short runway?
TGU is CLOSED. No larger aircraft will be landing there anytime soon. TACA 890 has not been moved.
I’m supposed to be bringing 12 high school students to Honduras for a mission trip on Tuesday June 3. We are flying American Airlines into Toncontin. American says the airport will be open for buisness as usual on Monday. Can anyone give me any more information?
Just got back from a mission trip to Honduras. We were supposed to be the next flight into Toncontin after 890 on 30 May. We flew into San Pedro Sula instead, after much hassle with AA. Return was more difficult. As of Sat 7 june Toncontin was still closed. we got ourselves to San Salvador (six hr drive) and American transfered our tickets to depart there.
Don’t count on American Airlines to do anything for you. They left us hanging getting in and getting out. They refused to officially cancel flights until a few hours before so you couldn’t transfer tickets without paying a large penalty. TACA and Continental bent over backwards to accommodate passengers, immediately rerouted all flights to San Pedro Sula. I’ll never fly American again. Hopefully they won’t be in business much longer.
PS Its about a 4 hr drive from SPS to Tegucigalpa by car or bus, but don’t drive at night, the road between SPS and Siguatapeque is not safe at night (advised by residents).
Yeah, just came back from a mission trip to Honduras. Landed in Tegus airport (on american airlines) 8/16- the pilot missed the runway, we had to take back off with mountains looming in the foreground, at a 90 degree angle upward, circle around and land again. I’m not a fan of flying anyway…I just chewed 2 more xanax, washed it down with a fifth of malibu, and dozed through the next attempt when the clapping passengers woke me back up. UGH I’m glad I didn’t know ahead of time. Next year will be flying into the other airport….although the 5 hour or so drive through the cliffs might not be much safer.
As an addition, we also had problems with American Airlines. Their crew from Miami was late on the way back (that happened when we went down too…) so we missed our connection and spent 2 extra nights in miami. Missed work, etc. They were not very nice about it- gave us a hard time when we asked for hotels and food vouchers. I said to them, that if I was in the habit of just not showing up for work, I think I would lose my job. How ’bout the AA crew?
Not an understatement, you can look in adobe hut kitchen windows as you fly the approach route into this airport. If the pilot does not touch down quickly they either try and get the plane back in the air or cross their fingers and hope they don’t fall off the cliff at the end of the runway. I went in and out of there about 10 times, each an adventure.
Landed with Continental there once with a 25knt 45 cross on landing. Quite an experience.
I am the captain of Mooney N228RM flying the instrument approach into Tegucigalpa on the 3rd of January 2008. An Amerian Airline was before us on the approach. When I heard the American Airline captain say he aborting the approach, I became alert and wondered about the conditions. Next we were cleared for the VOR approach to descent to 5500ft. Once we reached that altitude, we noticed our airspeed was going down and we had to apply full power to hold that altitude and had to decide to also abort the approach. Truely a dangerous airport.
A tracking of our flight can be seen here: http://www.zahorsky.net/gps.php?action=showmap&fromid=977&toid=1003