Bolivian Plane Crash Lands Short Of Runway

A charter Boeing 727 flown by beleaguered airline Lloyd Aereo Boliviano crashed in a scrubby bog short of an airport near the eastern lowland city of Trinidad on Friday. Several injuries, but no deaths, were reported.

Passengers interviewed by local radio stations said the plane first lost power and then suffered serious damage when it landed.

Photographs showed the mud-spattered blue-and-orange LAB jet stripped of at least one wing and lying in a flooded clearing. A set of landing gear was in the water nearby.

The airline's regional manager in Trinidad, Patricia Aruz, said no one was killed, but several passengers were taken to a nearby hospital for injuries, according to Juan Carlos Zambrano, a reporter on the scene for Radio Patuju.

Turned away Friday morning by fierce storms at its destination - the airport northern city of Cobija - the plane headed south to Trinidad, some 370 miles away - only to lose power a few miles short of the runway, passengers said.

"We noticed the engines went out, and there was this calm," said Paolo Bravo, a Bolivian senator who survived the crash, in an interview with the radio network Erbol.

"Then they told us, 'Crash positions! crash positions!' and it was just another two or three seconds before we hit.

"I think you could call it a belly flop," Bravo continued. "The plane fell, the wings broke off, but the fuselage was OK."

LAB, Bolivia's former state airline was privatized in 1996 but has been in and out of bankruptcy in recent years. The company now runs a skeleton fleet of only a handful of planes on a charter basis only.

LAB was operating the Boeing 727 as a charter for Transporte Aereo Militar, another small Bolivian airline. In recent months TAM has chartered LAB flights to carry overflow passengers during a heavy Bolivian rainy season that has washed out roads throughout the country.

In interviews with Bolivian media, LAB spokesman Gustavo Viscarra said the plane was carrying 155 passengers. He declined to confirm passengers' suggestions the plane had run out of gas.

"It was the decision of the pilot to make a forced landing," Viscarra said.