LA PAZ, Bolivia — A plane carrying more than 150 people crash-landed in a bog in eastern Bolivia on Friday after fierce storms turned it away from its destination and it tried to reach another airport, according to officials. All on board survived.
Photographs by local media showed the charter Boeing 727, flown by a local airline, in a flooded forest clearing, stripped of at least one wing. A set of landing gear was in the water nearby.
“I think you could call it a belly flop,” Paolo Bravo, a Bolivian senator who was on board said. “The plane fell, the wings broke off, but the fuselage was OK.”
The plane took off from the Bolivian capital, La Paz, but severe storms forced it to turn away from its destination in the northern city of Cobija. It then headed some 370 miles south to the eastern lowland city of Trinidad and was three miles short of the runway when the pilot was forced to make an emergency landing.
Talk to us
> Give us your news tips.
> Send us a letter to the editor.
> More Herald contact information.
