# Talk:Avianca Flight 052

Spanish is my mother tongue. To me "I need priority", or "give me priority" is equivalent to "me first".  — Preceding unsigned comment added by 129.97.173.231 (talk) 15:40, 15 June 2011 (UTC) 
Although the crash was attributed to pilot error, it must be kept in mind that in Spanish, the word priority has the connotation of emergency in English. I feel that the article needs to mention this. However, I cannot (at this time) find any sources to cite in this manner. Hence, I have added the NPOV-section tag.
--Aveek 08:08, 29 October 2005 (UTC)

Did you learn this fact from the corresponding episode of the TV Show, "Mayday"? I'm watching it at this moment. They are right, you know. Maybe you can go to some website where they cite Mayday's resources. --RPharazon 19:14, 26 November 2005 (UTC)
As a fluent Spanish speaker, I can vouch for that word as its source.  the first poster is correct.

Okay, maybe if you put it in as "Some people believe that problems arose due to language problems mostly because 'Priority' in Spanish has an equivalent meaning of 'Emergency' in English."
--RPharazon 04:36, 27 November 2005 (UTC)

"Prioty" may mean "Emergency" in Spanish language but bear in mind this did happen in America where English is the national language.
(And the official language of ATC InnocuousFox 15:22, 21 April 2007 (UTC))

This is going to get long winded so I apologize for the length. Something about this crash really stirs up strong emotions in people. At first glance maybe it's hard not to sympathise with a foreign crew coming into New York and being left to hold until they were on fumes. Reality isn't that simple.
I recall reading in one of my pilot magazines years ago about a small plane south of Hawaii having problems. The nearest airport was at Johnston Atoll. I wish I could recall the exact specifics and know where I read this for a better citation. Basically the problem with landing there is it was then a United States Military Base and not normally open to civillian traffic. As I recall the pilot was getting a little flustered dealing with the controller trying to explain that he needed to land there and what did he need to do to convince the controller of the urgency of the situation. The controller radios back, "You have to say the words." Lightbulb goes off in pilots brain and he declares an emergency. Those are the magic words that cut through all the red tape and the plane was immediately cleared to land.
As a native speaker of English with some knowledge of Spanish I can't say for certain whether Priority really means Emergency in Spanish or not. It seems to me Emergencia means Emergency in Spanish. From reading the NTSB report it is clear the Captain is aware of the urgency of the situation and tells the copilot working the radios to declare an Emergency. "Digale que estamos en emergencia . . . Digale que no tenemos combustible." (Tell him we are in an emergency . . . Tell him we have no fuel.) The Captain clearly said emergencia, not prioridad.
We know from the transcript the copilot advised they needed priority due to their fuel but never said emergency. This would tell the controller the plane should still have enough fuel to fly to Kennedy and hold 45 minutes but that they can no longer reach Boston and hold there. So the controller bumped them up ahead of other aircraft to put them into position for the approach and nothing more. If that sounds negligent or cold blooded then you won't pass a basic ground school class to become a pilot. It is not the controllers job to monitor every planes fuel, that's the flight crews job. The controller was basically told fuel is becoming a problem and acted appropriately by moving them up in the queue. If the controller had been told it was an emergency then he would have moved this plane up to the front of the line and probably arranged for either himself or another controller to guide the plane all the way in to prevent miscommunication on their emergency status. The copilot could have also requested a single controller approach to prevent misunderstandings.
Now maybe that's easy to say sitting comfortably at my desk on the ground. However running a plane out of gas is pretty much first, last and always the flight crews fault. This crew ran out because the Flight Engineer never spoke up and told the captain exactly how long they could hold at every hold they were given and still make an approach to Kennedy, fly to Boston and hold for 45 minutes. Only when the situation became critical did the copilot speak up to the controller and even then only asked for priority. Despite the Pilot realizing the gravity of the situation at the end in my mind he bears the greatest responsibility of all. While it is true he was having trouble hearing in his headset at the end in my mind he never should have let the plane leave the ground.
Reading the entire report he was given a flight plan to Kennedy with an alternate of Boston, weather forecast for enroute, destination and alternate airport. He should have noticed that Boston weather was forecast to be below the higher minimum conditions required for an alternate airport. Obviously the quality of their flight dispatching should be questioned that he was even given such a poorly prepared flight plan but responsibility for accepting it still lies with the Pilot in Command. As an example if a flight dispatcher handed me a flight plan from Gunnison Colorado to Aspen with a cruise altitude at 10,000 feet I think I'd ask them what tunnel they expected me to fly through. Accepting it, let alone being stupid enough to fly it would be entirely my fault when investigators arrived on scene.
In this case the flight dispatcher indicated the flight plan was prepared by their dispatching software. That it always listed Boston as the alternate for flights to New York regardless of weather.  The report states the nearest airport to Kennedy with conditions forecast to be above alternate minimums was Syracuse. This was probably not suitable for a transcontinental international flight so it goes on to state that Buffalo was probably the nearest airport that would be appropriate to use as an alternate. We'll never know why the Captain accepted this flight plan.
I'm not sure if the plane would have been able to hold enough fuel for the trip to Kennedy, then Buffalo, then 45 minutes of holding and still been able to depart the higher altitude airport in Medellín. Did the Captain notice this problem with the flight plan and ignore it because it might have meant a tech stop for fuel in Miami? We'll never know, but we do know he never requested updated weather for New York at any time during the flight. They had a contract with Pan Am to provide enroute weather updates and could have reached them in Miami or further up the east coast and been warned the weather detiorated below their forecast info. Armed with this information the crew might have diverted into Dulles, BWI or Philadelphia. Just because Boston was the filed alternate did not mean they were obligated to only go there. I don't think I've ever once diverted to a filed alternate beyond my destination. The airport underneath me I have the information on and can see the conditions myself is usually a better diversion point then something over the horizon and unknown.
Sadly the FAA settled to avoid a lawsuit and that always makes people think they screwed up. I think it was a political decision caused by attorneys jumping on this weasel word "Priority". Fanning the flames of anti-american sentiment in Colombia, a country the United States needed to keep on friendly terms in the never ending war on drugs. This crew collectively caused the accident by adding link after link in the chain of events. The crew broke the regs, several of them, not ATC. Like lobsters in a pot of water slowly being heated up, they cooked instead of getting out of the situation. It's really sad, frustrating, makes you angry, but it's also the truth. Skywayman (talk) 14:17, 3 June 2008 (UTC)

Skyway: Do you have a source that anti-American sentiment was the reason why this was the case? Relying on the documentary program, it seems that the rage was entirely towards the ATC in particular and not the US in general. In particular many of the passengers were American or living in the USA. WhisperToMe (talk) 14:24, 29 April 2009 (UTC)
I must also add that on the Mayday program a passenger talked about what the word meant. WhisperToMe (talk) 14:23, 29 April 2009 (UTC)

I can't source anti-American sentiment directly in this case in part because of how long ago it was. It has been present in Latin American relations enough that I believe it was a factor. I can't directly source that we need to keep Colombia on friendly terms with us either but it appears obvious that has been the U.S. policy for quite some time. My opinion on this one area may be sufficient for discussion page but not for the article. Anti-American sentiment was very much evident in the GOL disaster though and that could easily be sourced. One might argue the rage was directed at the American flight crew there but reading the material one had the impression common sense went right out the widow with the media and public alike. Unlike this case I strongly feel ATC was to blame in the GOL disaster and nationality has nothing do with it. If ATC had screwed up with Avianca I'd have been all over them above instead.
Regarding the Mayday program I have seen it and yes a passenger described her impression of the language difficulty. It's still a weasel word. Pilots are taught the correct word to use. The Co-Pilot didn't use it with ATC and the Captain did to the Co-Pilot directly. One can argue with the exact same logic she used that Priority means Emergency in English too. It is very clear in the world of aviaition it does not. That's not an us versus them it is an International standard.
As an aside I spent a part of my childhood in Mazatlán. I used to watch Emergency! on television there. The Spanish language may be different in other countries but it was translated there as ¡Emergencia! NOT ¡Prioridad! Skywayman (talk) 10:58, 17 December 2009 (UTC)
Being almost out of fuel is an Emergency in English and the word Priority does not necessarily denote an equally dire situation. The flight crew only had to use the one word emergency and they would have been jumped to the front of the queue and cleared to land as soon as was possible. Blaming the controllers for not knowing that priority in Spanish can also mean 'emergency' is not really on. The International language of aviation is (and has been for years) English and pilots and aircrew are expected to be sufficiently proficient in English to be able to converse-with and understand directions from air traffic control, and to be able to convey information likely to be of importance, back to the ATC. The cause of Avianca Flight 52's accident was a failure of the flight crew to advise the ATC that the fuel situation was as bad as it was. They only had to tell the ATC that the situation was becoming an emergency and they would have been able to land immediately. They failed to do this. To be fair to them, the rather chaotic state of the air traffic around the airport due to the weather that night, and the rather unfortunate hand-overs they received from controller-to-controller didn't help. The international agreements on air navigation specify standard forms of safety-critical radio messages and the Avianca crew only had to use one of these, such as Pan-pan, Pan-pan, Pan-pan, Avianca 52 declaring a fuel emergency and the New York ATC would have allowed them to land immediately. This sort of situation is what these radio procedures were instigated for. Unfortunately, for whatever reason, the flight crew on Avianca Flight 52 did not use them.
The moral of this story is that if you are a pilot in a situation where you think you could end up killing everyone on board you'd better make damn sure that you tell someone on the ground about it. Much better for them to hear about it from you in person, and with some chance of them giving you assistance, than trying to deduce it from a rather battered Cockpit Voice Recorder. And if they don't get the message the first time, then bloody-well SHOUT!  —Preceding unsigned comment added by 86.112.49.1 (talk) 15:50, 16 February 2010 (UTC)
Having done my ground school in Spanish, I can tell you for sure that one thing is Prioridad and another is Emergencia.  I clearly remember the instructor explaining to us (this was 1992) the several Prioridades for taking-off and landing: plane in emergency, mercy flight, presidential plane, military plane, scheduled passenger plane, etc., etc., until lastly us, school plane. This order of Prioridades was the position in the queue, nothing else. And then he explained to us what Emergencia means: a plane in Emergencia can jump over virtually any rule in order to land; it was up to the pilot in command to decide the route, manner, procedure, waypoint, ILS, vector, whatever he or she decides is needed to get the plane to the runway A.S.A.P., and after declaring an Emergencia (MAYDAY, per our ICAO English glossary we were given to memorize) the duty of ATC becomes separating the other traffic away from us. Period. I was very surprised when I watched the Nat Geo documentary and heard the "angry relative" (I understand the loss and I offer my sympathies, but with due respect, angry relatives should not conduct any air crash investigation) saying Prioridad means Emergencia to Spanish-speaking people. Not in my Spanish-speaking country. The show should have depicted a "grieving relative" instead, and they should have put more emphasis on the following pages of the NTSB report:  
Page 47:
"FAA order 7110.65F, "Air Traffic Control," Chapter 9, provides
guidelines to air traffic controllers on assisting aircraft in an emergency. An emergency can be either a "distress" or an "urgency" condition, as defined in the "Pilot/Controller Glossary." A pilot who encounters a distress condition would declare an emergency by beginning the initial communication with the word "MAYDAY," preferably repeated three times. For an urgency condition, the word "PAN-PAN" should be used in the same manner."
Page 63:
"The word "priority" was used in procedures' manuals provided by the Boeing Company to the airlines. A captain from Avianca Airlines testified that the use by the first officer of the word "priority," rather than "emergency," may have resulted from training at Boeing. The captain also testified that airline personnel, who provided flight and ground instruction to the first officer of AVA052, were trained by Boeing. He stated that these personnel received the impression from the training that the words priority and emergency conveyed the same meaning to air traffic control.  Boeing Bulletins 80-l and 80-l (Revised), addressing operations with low fuel quantity indications, state that, "during any operation with very low fuel quantity, priority handling from ATC should be requested."
Also, in its published procedures, Avianca Airlines uses the term "priority" regarding the communication of low fuel status.  However, when ATC controllers were asked the phraseology that they would respond to immediately when a flightcrew indicated a low fuel emergency, they replied "MAYDAY," "PAN, PAN, PAN," and "Emergency." The controllers stated that, although they would do their utmost to assist a flight that requested "priority," the word would not require a specific response and that if a pilot is in a low fuel emergency and needs emergency handling, he should use the word "emergency." However, the fact that the NY ARTCC controllers reacted to facilitate the departure of AVA052 from holding at CAMRN, after the request for priority, suggests that some level of urgency or nonroutine status was perceived by the controllers."
Page 79:
"Christopher Hart, Member, filed the following partial concurring/dissenting statement: I concur in part with the probable cause as adopted, but I dissent in part because I do not agree that a contributing factor is "the lack of standardized understandable terminology for pilots and controllers for minimum and emergency fuel states." We do have standardized understandable terminology -- "Mayday" internationally, and "Emergency" in English -- that would have adequately communicated the existence of a dangerous situation, and the problem was that the pilots failed to use this terminology with the controllers."
And pages 216, 219 and 237:
"This transcription covers the time Period from January 26, 1990,
0158 UTC to January 26, 1990, 0238 UTC."
"0202:00         AAL       American six ninety two I want to advise you we're at minimum fuel uh we're uh about uh twelve or fourteen minutes from declaring an emergency"
"0232:51          AVA052      Avianca zero five two we just ah lost two engines and we need priority please"
Aldo L (talk) 04:53, 23 September 2010 (UTC)

I had stated in an earlier comment that nationality is not a factor in what I believe the cause of the accident to be. It occurs to me that American Flight 965 is the reverse in that the crew were American and ATC Colombian. ATC is not to blame for that accident. It is quite common for ATC anywhere to offer pilots a faster re route if one becomes available. I've been offered several myself but can think of one off the top of my head I declined due to workload. Unfortunately the flight crew screwed up there and in a lot of ways I feel the misidentification of navaid R (Romeo or Rozo?) to be as weasely as emergency or priority here. There were checks and double checks the crew were to perform before accepting any new waypoint. They may have believed R to be the Rozo NDB but they had to verify it first. Neglecting to do those checks and double checks led them into the mountains. I refuse to in any way blame Colombian ATC for offering a late arrival a short cut. Skywayman (talk) 14:20, 5 January 2013 (UTC)
I am a native English speaker and from New Zealand, so probably neutral in this. From what I can tell there was no anti-American sentiment here. The impression I got was the opposite, that the flight was treated in an offhand manner by the US air traffic controllers because it was from Columbia. As stated above in the flight log the pilots clearly stated their problems, and even if they hadn't; as a native English speaker 'priority' means 'priority' to me, even if it doesn't mean emergency, it certainly doesn't mean 'send to the back of the queue.' The air traffic controllers messed up royally and got off scott free. If there was any cultural problem here it was New Yorkers perhaps expecting that the flight crew would be more forceful in an emergency - in most other cultures, having informed air traffic control of the problem, you would not expect to have to shout about it to get action.  — Preceding unsigned comment added by 125.236.232.206 (talk) 04:37, 6 December 2013 (UTC) 

'Priority' is a nothing-word, with no standardised meaning and no penalty for mis-using it. Anyone who wants to jump the queue and land earlier can call for 'priority' just to make up for a late arrival. To an ATC the word is meaningless and would most likely be ignored. 'Mayday, Mayday' OTOH is a recognised emergency request and would have been handled immediately. It WOULD have been handled immediately as there are legal penalties for both the controller him/herself and for the ATC organisation for not responding to such a request in an appropriate and timely manner.
There are also legal penalties for a Captain/FO mis-using the 'Mayday Mayday' call so if an ATC hears it he/she knows it is likely to be serious.
The New York ATC on that night were overloaded as bad weather slowed arrivals considerably and caused them to stack and hold incoming traffic until it could be landed. It is true, ATC could have done things better, but the fact is that the aeroplane failed to communicate properly with them. If it had done so then, despite whatever the perceived  shortcomings of ATC were, the aircraft would not have crashed.
On the accident flight the Captain was very experienced but spoke very little English,. His First Officer spoke some English but was comparatively less experienced. The accident was caused by the First Officer failing to inform the New York ATC of the slowly increasing seriousness of the situation. The blame, if any, goes to the training organisation for failing to train the First Officer to an adequate standard, and to the airline for pairing him on an international flight with a Captain who spoke insufficient English to communicate with the New York ATC.  — Preceding unsigned comment added by 86.8.126.91 (talk) 15:18, 5 September 2022 (UTC)

"Had the plane not exhausted its fuel supply, there would likely have been a fire which would have claimed more lives."
Had the plane not exhausted its fuel supply it would never have crashed therefore there would not have been a fire... Or have I missed something?! I've removed the line anyway. -- cjp116 16:11 (UTC) 28th October 2008

The Mayday program stated that there was no fire because of the lack of fuel. But it was a good call to remove the line. WhisperToMe (talk) 14:24, 29 April 2009 (UTC)
At the time of the accident (I remember this very clearly since my best friend was living in the area) there was much surprise in the media that so many people had survived. So I think an explanation for this is granted. Aldo L (talk) 05:20, 14 February 2011 (UTC)

The "airline operational control dispatch system" mentioned in this article requires clarification or definition.  As it is currently written, it is unclear what the article is referring to. A quick online search turned up no definition. — Preceding unsigned comment added by 166.217.204.162 (talk • contribs) 19:49, 8 July 2011 (UTC)

As written in the article, the crew DID NOT declare a fuel emergency. In fact they were criminally negligent in allowing the fuel reserves to go below the minimum requred to reach their diversion, (Boston), with enough for at least one go-around. As soon as they reached their Bingo fuel they should have declared a fuel emergency, not wait until the engines spool down!!!!!!!!!Petebutt (talk) 18:24, 25 June 2012 (UTC)
No, they clearly declared it to ATC:
"This transcription covers the time Period from January 26, 1990, 0158 UTC to January 26, 1990, 0238 UTC."
"0202:00 AAL American six ninety two I want to advise you we're at minimum fuel uh we're uh about uh twelve or fourteen minutes from declaring an emergency"
"0232:51 AVA052 Avianca zero five two we just ah lost two engines and we need priority please"
ATC were negligent.  — Preceding unsigned comment added by 125.236.232.206 (talk) 04:39, 6 December 2013 (UTC) 

Losing two engines on a passenger airliner is a Mayday situation, and all the flight crew had to do was say the word three times over the radio to ATC and they would have been directed to land immediately. It is frankly mind-boggling that the crew didn't do that, I'm bloody-sure I would have.
"we're uh about uh twelve or fourteen minutes from declaring an emergency" - but they never did - even when two of the engines flamed-out. ATC have no way of reading a pilot's mind. Unless you actually declare an emergency - using the term 'Mayday' - then they aren't going to treat you as if you have one.
ATC controllers are trained to give a specific response to the phrases 'Mayday', 'Pan-pan', and 'Sécurité' and unless these specific words are used they are going to treat everything as more or less normal. The fact that the Avianca flight was low on fuel is not the controller's immediate problem nor part of his/her purview - that's the pilot's responsibility. To be fair to the pilots the ATC controller could have been more helpful, however he was under a high workload and it is a bit much to expect him to hold their hand in such a situation. The aircrew only had to declare an emergency five minutes earlier and the accident would not have occurred. BTW, using the term 'emergency' itself won't do. You have to use the word 'Mayday'. That's what it's for. You see ATC controllers are trained to listen for certain words, such as 'flight level', 'heading', 'Pan-pan', 'Mayday', etc., and are trained to give an appropriate response. The term 'emergency' could be a pilot talking off-hand to his cabin crew with the transmit button inadvertently pressed. That's why a term unlikely to be used in any other situation, such as 'Pan' or 'Mayday' was chosen by ICAO.
The root cause of the accident was in having an experienced first officer who spoke no English - and who therefore was not able to communicate with ATC directly himself, while the second officer who did was not experienced enough to know how or when to communicate the seriousness of their problem to the ATC controllers until it was by then too late. In any situation like this there is a point where you need to decide whether to declare an emergency or wait until hopefully things get better. This is where experience comes in. Knowing when you are at this point, and then having the courage to take the steps to declaring an emergency. It does take courage as declaring an emergency gets people's immediate attention, so if you do it unnecessarily you will possibly suffer some embarrassment afterwards. But you may well be alive after a situation where without the declaration you might not be.
The second officer only had to declare an emergency at an early enough point - using the word 'Mayday' - and the accident would not have  occurred. So what if he had been wrong, and the aircraft had after declaring 'Mayday' landed safely with enough fuel anyway - well, he would have been the butt of a few jokes, and possibly received a mild lecture from the flight operations controller. But he would still be alive. And no-one would ever have heard of Avianca Flight 52.
So when considering declaring a 'Mayday' it is better to be 'too soon' rather than 'too late'. In the former, the worst-case scenario is minor inconvenience to the airport and related services leading to possible personal embarrassment and a red face for the pilot concerned. In the latter, possible front-page headlines and numerous funerals for those onboard with much tears and sadness all round. Generally most people, as well as the airports and airlines, would consider the former preferable to the latter.
Neither of the flight crew were 'criminally negligent', as the second officer wasn't experienced enough to know any better, and the first officer, who was, couldn't understand the communications going on between the second officer and the tower - if he had been able to he would have almost certainly told the tower in no uncertain terms what the situation was becoming, and the urgency of it. It was just an unfortunate unforeseeable combination of circumstances, as accidents so often are.
BTW, to any pilots out there in a similar situation having trouble conveying the urgency of a potentially life-threatening situation, finally resorting to plain old Anglo-Saxon will usually work.— Preceding unsigned comment added by 95.148.220.15 (talk) 11:43, 25 January 2015 (UTC)

Wasn't this the crash that brought about changes to the way seats are mounted to the floor (a new mounting system was mandated as a result)? Per the NTSB report
Seventy-two of the 74 passengers who survived sustained serious
injuries. These injuries consisted of multiple lower leg fractures and
dislocations, head injuries, hip fractures, spinal fractures, and multiple
lacerations and contusions. The legs of passengers probably impacted the
lower seat back frames of seat units in front of them. Simultaneously,
passenger seats most likely collapsed and twisted downward and to the left,
resulting in hip and spinal fractures. As the impact sequence progressed,
separation of the seat units from their floor attachments probably pushed
passengers forward into other passengers, seat units, and other wreckage
debris, causing head injuries and lacerations.
Also:
The aft cabin section was open at its forward end. Most of the
seats in this section were found separated from their floor tracks. The
floor panels were displaced, the aft galley and lavatories were displaced,
and food from the galley was scattered throughout this section. — Preceding unsigned comment added by 107.77.83.57 (talk • contribs) 19:54, 1 February 2015 (UTC)

To save clogging the FAC nomination page I'm posting thoughts here.

The first paragraph of 'Rescue' should be in the section above ('Crash') apart from the last sentence '(flaps and slats') which should be in the investigation section somewhere.
Some of the section headers have all words capitalised. Nimbus (Cumulus nimbus floats by) 11:52, 9 March 2015 (UTC)
Done. -- Veggies (talk) 20:35, 9 March 2015 (UTC)
Good stuff. There is an embedded link for the aircraft registration in the infobox, shouldn't be there and is returning a blank page for me. There seems to be a mixture of citation styles throughout the article (WP:CITEHOW), no expert but it has to be consistent. If I get time I'll read the book articles and see if there is anything to add. Nimbus (Cumulus nimbus floats by) 00:30, 10 March 2015 (UTC)

Unlike similar articles, there is no information about passengers nationality. Anybody can find a reference and complete the article? Monfie (talk) 18:21, 8 July 2015 (UTC)

According to the NTSB, the date of the crash was July 19, 1989 but the article states January 20, 1990.  Source: http://www.ntsb.gov/investigations/AccidentReports/Reports/AAR9104.pdf  — Preceding unsigned comment added by 149.142.243.33 (talk) 19:37, 18 October 2015 (UTC) 

The article is clear that the date of the crash was 25 Jan 1990.  This is also the date of the references given.Andrewgprout (talk) 22:56, 18 October 2015 (UTC)

This review is transcluded from Talk:Avianca Flight 52/GA1. The edit link for this section can be used to add comments to the review.
Reviewer: MPJ-DK (talk · contribs) 13:21, 5 March 2016 (UTC)

Full disclosure: I am a WIki Cup participant, I have my own GAN (CMLL World Tag Team Championship) and I also have a Feature Article (CMLL World Heavyweight Championship) and Feature List (Mexican National Light Heavyweight Championship) candidates in need of input. Not that it's a factor in my review but it would be appreciated. 
I am about to start my review of this article, normally I provide my input in bits and pieces over a day or two so expect running updates for a while. In this case, I will also review the comments made during the two Feature Article Candidate reviews and pull out anything that may still apply.  MPJ-US  13:21, 5 March 2016 (UTC)

Feature Article 1 Unresolved issues
Nothing unresolved as far as I can tell.
Feature Article 2 Unresolved issues
There are mentions of the cultural/language barrier but also a ton of links and supposed references that did not actually have anything to do with this flight. To say "well there are language and cultural barriers" is not the same as "this accident was caused by those barriers"? I will go through the sources, if any tie this specific flight to it then I'll consider if the representation in the article is appropriate. I believe SandyGeorgia also pointed out some grammatical issues, which I will check against the current version to see if they still apply.
To me those are the issues that need to be looked at and I will work both into my general review.


### GA Toolbox
So I normally get the Toolbox links out of the way first, often the hit on issues that need to be corrected.

Peer review
Per WP:LEAD an article of this size (56ish kb) should have a three-four paragraph lead
The prose size is ~30 KB, I think. sst✈ 05:25, 6 March 2016 (UTC)
If I copy the text from the page in read format (leaving out the reference section) it comes to around 33,000 characters according to the DYK character count too. So that's the 3-4 paragraph range as far as I can tell, MPJ-US  12:11, 6 March 2016 (UTC)
 Done sst✈ 12:40, 7 March 2016 (UTC)
Redundancies - the tool points out some redundancies, I would suggest looking into those. It will be something I look at too when I do my read through.
"didn't" should not be used outside of direct quotes.
 Done sst✈ 12:40, 7 March 2016 (UTC)
Copyright violations
Y - comes back as "highly unlikely" so I am good there.
Disambiguations Links
Y - No problems
External Links
Dead links
7
8
10
11
12
All fixed. sst✈ 05:25, 6 March 2016 (UTC)
Agreed Y


### Images
None of the images have Alt text. Please add
No license issues that I can see.


### Sources
Referene 22 seems to lack data
The rest looks good to me format wise, reliability wise etc.


### General
Isn't "handoff" two words?
I don't think so. It may either be "hand-off" or "handoff", but "hand off" is a different term. wikt:handoff sst✈ 15:00, 12 March 2016 (UTC)
Same thing for "flightpath"
 Done
"Thirty-seven fire and ambulance companies as well as" should be "Thirty-seven fire and ambulance companies, as well as"
 Done
"surgery for the Nassau" should be "surgery of the Nassau"
 Done
"children in the darkness afterwards" should be "children in the darkness afterward"
 Done
"communications from the ATC personnel was "proper", communications is plural so it should be "were proper"
 Done
"birthdates" shoud be "birth dates"
 Done
It may be helpful to put a note in on what "Expect Further Clearance" means since it is a term called into question.
There is a footnote explaining what it means. sst✈ 15:03, 12 March 2016 (UTC)
I think the "Investigation" section adequately covers the language/term problems between what Avianca taught their pilots and what the FAA's guidelines are. From a lanauge standpoint the concerns pointed out looks to be represented fairly. And the controversy section follows up on the lack of standardized terms
Not sure what the specific cultural issues were referred to in the FAC were about, none of the cited sources provided were Avianca 52 specific so they really have no room in this article.
I do not see a reference for the allegation of drug trafficking nor the FAA denials
Under appearnces in media I think it may be good to state that Gladwell's book does not specifically cite the Avianca 52 crash, just to be clear.
 Done
Following up the FAC comments that really struck me as still being applicable to the article.
The lead uses the term "result" or variations on this, can you mix it up a bit in the lead?
Settle damages due to the victims" - "Settled to pay for for the damages to the victims and their families"
@SSTflyer: - Woops, forgot to put this article on hold when I made my last comments, so I'm putting it on hold now for at least 7 days to allow for improvements.  MPJ-US  12:43, 8 March 2016 (UTC)
@SSTflyer: - So just a quick summary of issues left.

Reference 22 is a little too bare, can you add any data around it?
 Not done The reference is for linking the full text of an excerpt of the Code of Federal Regulations. It uses the {{CodeFedReg}} template, and I think a wikilink to an article and an external link to the full text is sufficient. sst✈ 11:40, 14 March 2016 (UTC)
Since the linked document has an actual date listed I would suggest at least the "date" and "accessdate" parameters added.  MPJ-US  11:54, 14 March 2016 (UTC)
No reference for the allegation of drug trafficking nor the FAA denials.
 Done
The lead uses the term "result" or variations on this, can you mix it up a bit in the lead?
 Done
Settle damages due to the victims" - "Settled to pay for for the damages to the victims and their families"
 Done
That's it, I only see those four issues left.  MPJ-US  18:52, 13 March 2016 (UTC)

The references formatting is a minor issue, I will pass it for GA. Great work.  MPJ-US  11:54, 14 March 2016 (UTC)

Today's DYK says both guys swallowed condoms. The articles says only one guy and the other had "packets". The refs say one had condoms and the other packets of latex. These don't all match up and should be fixed.  — Preceding unsigned comment added by 68.10.211.236 (talk) 11:50, 30 March 2016 (UTC) 

I just corrected the article, so the Main page is now wrong. You could try Talk:Main_Page#Errors_in_the_current_Did_you_know... zzz (talk) 11:59, 30 March 2016 (UTC)
I added another source. The New York Times tells a different story to the Associated Press, in this instance. zzz (talk) 16:56, 30 March 2016 (UTC)