‘Wind a factor’ in deadly Costa Rica plane crash

STRONG winds were seen as a factor in the crash of a small plane in Costa Rica that killed all 10 US passengers on board and two local crew members, according to officials and witnesses.

The accident, which occurred on Sunday in the country’s northwestern Guanacaste region popular with tourists seeking pristine tropical beaches, killed all on board the small Cessna 208 Caravan owned and operated by domestic airline Nature Air.

The plane burst into flames on impact, according to rescue officials and locals.

Costa Rica’s civil aviation agency said the pilots had tried to land at Punta Islita, a beachside town in Guanacaste, earlier on Sunday to get the passengers but aborted because of “the gusts of wind”.

The aircraft was up-to-date with its certifications and had been inspected a month earlier, the agency said.

“There had been a lot of wind, really strong,” one resident in the area said on Monday. She said when she and other locals arrived at the crash site, up a steep hillside, “we couldn’t see, absolutely everything was black”.

She added: “The front part of the plane was all on fire, and the tail part was the only bit intact.”

Police and fire crews arrived within 25 minutes of the crash, which happened shortly after midday, she said.

Another resident, Efrain Rojas, told the La Nacion that the plane was “too low” after take-off.

“It did a turn to the left. For us, it looked like some sort of problem, and it was trying to get back to the runway. With the turn it did, it had one wing up vertical, and the other hit the trees,” he said.

The plane came down minutes after taking off from a small airstrip in Punta Islita, where the Americans had boarded.

An American family of five from the town of Scarsdale, a suburb of New York City, was wiped out in the crash, US media reported. Bruce and Irene Steinberg and their three sons William, Zachary and Matthew were all killed while on a vacation.

The other US victims were named asThibault Astruc, Amanda Geissler, Charles Palmer, Leslie Weiss and Sherry Wuu.