Almost a year after Mexican superstar Jenni Rivera and four members of her entourage perished in a plane crashed on a ranch in the Mexican state of Nuevo Leon, new details are beginning to emerge as to what may have caused their 1969 Learjet to go down.
According to Mexican officials, the crash was a result of a “series of factors” that may have included the plane’s age, the age of the pilot and the owner’s negligence in reporting problems with the aircraft. Due to the “high level of destruction of the aircraft”Mexican investigators may never find out what really happened on that plane on December 9, 2012, but weather conditions and the possibility of a fire on the aircraft have been ruled out by Mexico’s General Civil Aviation Administration (DGAC).
Based on radar images of the plane’s flight, investigators have found that the plane was sent into an immediate vertical drop after the pilots suddenly lost control of the aircraft during ascent, an indication that the plane’s horizontal stabilizer may be to blame. The pilots, 78-year-old Miguel Pérez Soto and 21-year-old Alejandro Torres, never made contact with air traffic controllers after as the plane was going down.
Although Federal Aviation Administration records show that Pérez was not licensed to fly passengers on a commercial plane in the United States, he was licensed to fly passengers in Mexico at the time of the incident, according to Mexican Communications and Transportation Secretariat (SCT). But, even though he was permitted to fly commercial passengers in Mexico, Pérez was not within Mexican regulations at the time of the flight due to the size of the Learjet . Mexican law states that anyone over the age of 65 cannot fly an aircraft that weighs over 5,700 kilos (12,570 lbs). The Learjet Pérez was flying weighed in at 6,800 kilos (15,000 lbs.) at the time of the flight. The DGAC reportedly gave the pilot a license that waived the restriction in January 2012, but it is unclear if the waived license was current at the time of the crash.
As for the plane’s maintenance history, the DGAC reported, “The aircraft operator did not allow notes in the logs about failures detected by the crew as when the aircraft flew out of alignment and vibrated when it reached cruising altitude.”
Family members of the four victims that died with Rivera have filed a wrongful death lawsuit against Starwood Enterprises of Las Vegas, the charter company that owned the aircraft. Starwood attempted to have the trial moved to Mexico, but a judge rejected the company’s petition and stated the trial will be held in Los Angeles.
