The crash of a Boeing 727 near Monterrey

Boeing 727-64 with registration number XA-SEL (serial number 19256, serial number 355) made its first flight on January 6, 1967 , and on January 17 it was transferred to the customer - Mexican airline Mexicana de Aviación (in short - Mexicana ), where it also received the name Azteca de Oro ^[1] . It was equipped with three turbofan (dual-circuit) Pratt & Whitney JT8D-7B engines ^[2] .

• The aircraft commander is Guillermo Garcia Ramos ( Spanish: Guillermo García Ramos ). Veteran of World War II, where he served in the famous 201st fighter squadron ( Squadron 201 ) operating at the Pacific Theater . After leaving military aviation, he began working at Mexicana. He was considered a very experienced pilot, since his experience was 25 years and he flew over 15,000 hours ^[3] .

The aircraft performed a short domestic passenger flight MX-704 from Mexico City , from where it flew at 7 am to Monterrey , with a total of 72 passengers and 7 crew members. The flight to Monterrey passed without deviations and soon the crew began to perform a descent with a vertical speed of 1,500-1,600 ft / min (460-490 m / min) and an air speed of 250 knots. A connection was also established with the take-off and landing dispatcher with a report on the descent to the airport, after which information was requested about the weather and other aircraft in the airport area. In response, the dispatcher said that there were no other aircraft in the airport area, but above the airport there was cloudiness with a lower boundary of 500 feet (150 m ), haze and light rain. The receipt of information was confirmed, and after the pilots were asked if the Sienega de Flores radio beacon works , but the answer was no, as it lacked power. Then, from flight 704, they reported that for some reason they were receiving a signal similar to the signal from this beacon. Then the crew reported that they saw the airport and began to carry out the decline. This was the last radio message from the XA-SEL ^{[2] [3] [4]} .

After some time, at a distance of 23 kilometers northwest of the airport the airliner crashed into a forest-covered slope of the Fraile Mountains ( Spanish: Cerro del Fraile ) 6000 feet (1800 m ) high and completely collapsed ^{[3] [4]} . All 79 people on board died, which at that time made the crash of flight 704 the largest-scale air crash in the country ^[2] .

• Famous amateur tennis player Rafael Osuna Herrera
• Politician Carlos Madraso

As it was determined, the plane was following the Monterrey beacon, after which, in accordance with the approach scheme, it made a right turn. Further, according to the scheme, a left turn should be made, but instead, the liner continued to decline for a long time at the rate of 260 °, deviating to the right from the approach scheme. Only at the end of the decline a slow turn to the left was started, during which the Boeing crashed at 232 ° heading into the mountains. The aircraft commander was considered an experienced pilot who knew the area well and had to understand that when he drove west he was heading straight for the mountains. But the investigators could not determine the reason for this deviation, since the last few minutes of the recording were absent on the speech recorder. It was also not possible to determine the signal from which radio beacon the crew caught, because the airport radio beacon at that moment stopped working due to loss of power supply ^[3] .

Since there was a well-known Mexican politician Carlos Madraso on board, there are hypotheses about political assassination , which can not be refuted or proved because of insufficient evidence ^[3] .