Petro insists that the age of the crashed military plane could have caused the accident

Bogotá.- The President of Colombia, Gustavo Petro, insisted this Wednesday, without any proof, that the age of the Hercules C-130 aircraft of the Colombian Aerospace Force (FAC) that crashed on Monday in Puerto Leguízamo, Putumayo department, and left 69 dead and 57 injured, may have been the cause of the accident, a hypothesis that is a matter of controversy in the country.

The president disagreed with the technical explanation given on Tuesday in a council of ministers by the commander of the FAC, General Carlos Fernando Silva, who said that the aircraft, with 43 years of service and donated to Colombia in 2020 by the United States Air Force, "was still in a condition to fly another 20,000 hours," which, with an average of 500 hours per year, would give it a useful life of another 40 years.

«There is no airplane with a lifespan of a century. Period. Nobody is irresponsible enough to think that», the president wrote this Wednesday on the social network X. In another message, Petro reiterated that he does not agree "neither with the interpretation nor with the explanations" given by General Silva and announced that he will request the list of officers and public officials who have responsibility for the acquisition and maintenance of the aircraft. The General Command of the Military Forces confirmed on Tuesday the 69 fatalities from the air disaster, considered the most serious in the country's military aviation. According to the official balance, 61 of the deceased were Army soldiers, six belonged to the FAC, and two to the Police. Petro, who has questioned the age of the aircraft since the moment of the accident, which he considered "junk," pointed to that factor as a possible cause of the accident since Monday, without conclusive evidence being presented so far as the investigation is ongoing. The president insisted that the "old age of the plane", which was received by the previous government, which he has tried to hold responsible for the accident, would be the cause of its crash upon takeoff from Puerto Leguízamo, in the Colombian Amazon. «The experience of the crew on the plane, doubled in number, is immense and reduces the probability of human error. There is no sign of attack. It was not a runway problem. Then they conclude that the cause is unknown,» he wrote.
Following this, he added: «The correct answer is: it increases the probability of the plane's aging.»

Responses to the President's Version

Petro's statements have caused a new controversy with experts, politicians, and academics due to the president's insistence on giving conclusions before there is an investigation into the accident. "The causes of an air accident are defined with a careful technical investigation; they are not a matter of opinion," stated academic Moisés Wasserman on X. For his part, economist Juan Daniel Oviedo, running mate of presidential candidate Paloma Valencia, of the Uribista Democratic Center party, stated that in a moment of national mourning like this, "the duty is clear: to protect life, clarify what happened with rigor and act with responsibility, taking care of the unity of the country."