Civil aviation official Carlos Padilla later confirmed what the survivors already knew in their bones: the aircraft had barely left the runway when it suddenly banked hard to the right and plunged into the sea off Roatán Island. That violent turn, just moments after takeoff, left no time for correction, no second chance for the pilots or passengers on board.
A local fisherman, whose small boat lay directly in the plane’s doomed path, watched the aircraft roar toward him before it slammed into the water. He survived by instinct and inches. On shore, Roatán Fire captain Franklin Borjas described the brutal reality of the rescue: a crash site ringed by roughly 30 meters of unforgiving rocks, impossible to reach on foot or by swimming. Every body recovered, every fragment of wreckage pulled from the surf, was won against a coastline that seemed determined to keep its dead.
