Qualla: Cubana de Aviación Flight 389

Cubana de Aviación Flight 389: Introduction

Thu, 16 Apr 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit Turkmenistan.airlines.frontview.arp.jpg: elfuser derivative work: Elfuser (talk), Public domain. The old Mariscal Sucre airport sat inside Quito like a knife inside a coat pocket. Runway 17 pointed south into the El Rosario neighborhood, where houses stacked up against the airport wall, where Tufino avenue crossed the approach path, and where children played soccer on a field that had no business being that close to a jetway. On the afternoon of August 29, 1998, a Cubana de Aviacion Tupolev Tu-154M bound for Havana tried three times to lift off the runway. The third attempt ended on that field. Eighty people died - seventy aboard the aircraft, ten on the ground including five of the children - in what remains the second-deadliest aviation disaster in Ecuadorian history.

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Cubana de Aviación Flight 389: A Runway in the Wrong Place

Thu, 16 Apr 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit Turkmenistan.airlines.frontview.arp.jpg: elfuser derivative work: Elfuser (talk), Public domain. Quito's old airport had been built when the city was smaller. By 1998 the urban area had grown completely around it, and residents of El Rosario lived with the knowledge that every departing aircraft passed low over their roofs. The dangers were not theoretical. On September 18, ...

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Cubana de Aviación Flight 389: Flight Context

Thu, 16 Apr 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit Turkmenistan.airlines.frontview.arp.jpg: elfuser derivative work: Elfuser (talk), Public domain. The crash site lies near 0.25 deg S, 78.58 deg W, in northern Quito's El Rosario neighborhood. The old Mariscal Sucre airport (former ICAO: SEQU) closed to commercial operations in 2013 and has been redeveloped as Parque Bicentenario. Traffic today uses the new Mariscal Sucre International (SEQM / UIO), roughly 18 km east of the city at Tababela. Quito sits at 2,850 m elevation, and the surrounding terrain rises sharply - density altitude performance is a standing issue for operations into the valley.

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Cubana de Aviación Flight 389: Three Takeoffs

Thu, 16 Apr 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit Turkmenistan.airlines.frontview.arp.jpg: elfuser derivative work: Elfuser (talk), Public domain. A pneumatic valve had blocked during the first engine start. The crew worked around it, starting two engines from ground power and the third during taxi, and received takeoff clearance. Then the first attempt failed. The second failed. On the third attempt, at rotation speed, the...

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Cubana de Aviación Flight 389: The Field After

Thu, 16 Apr 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit Turkmenistan.airlines.frontview.arp.jpg: elfuser derivative work: Elfuser (talk), Public domain. Survivors later told investigators that some of the doors would not open. People climbed out through a ruptured hole in the fuselage. Some escaped with their clothes on fire and jumped from the aircraft. Witnesses on the ground remembered the cries from inside the hull continuing...

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Cubana de Aviación Flight 389: What Changed

Thu, 16 Apr 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit Turkmenistan.airlines.frontview.arp.jpg: elfuser derivative work: Elfuser (talk), Public domain. The immediate response was a massive engineered safety zone at the south end of the runway - a berm 280 meters long and 92 meters wide, completed and inaugurated in mid-July 2000. Tufino avenue was buried beneath it in a two-lane tunnel. The new structure shielded most of the pat...

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