Incident Overview

Description
Flight 402 took off from Ciudad Trujillo runway 23 for a cargo flight to Miami. The Curtiss climbed to a height of 150 feet and entered a stall. The aircraft crashed about 300 feet to the left of the runway centerline and 200-300 feet short of the runway end. PROBABLE CAUSE: “The accident was originally caused by a mechanical defect in the port engine. The immediate cause may have been that the crew, encountering difficulties, applied an abnormal procedure, apparently attempting an emergency wheels-up landing and immediately thereafter trying to resume normal flight by applying full power to both engines, as there was no sign that either propeller had been feathered. It is likely that propeller overspeed or excessive decrease in pitch, or difficulties in the attempt to reoperate the defective engine, combined with critical speed at the height reached on takeoff, created abnormal flight characteristics which caused the aircraft to stall and crash.”
Primary Cause
Mechanical defect in the port engineMechanical defect in the port engineShare on: