Everybody loves a conspiracy, and Mexicans are no exception. So when José Francisco Blake Mora died in a helicopter crash last week, the rumor circus was in full swing minutes after the news broke. Not surprising, of course, as very few presidents have been as unlucky as Felipe Calderón, with no less than two of his Interior Secretaries dying in plane crashes in three years.
Up to this day, rumors about the death of Juan Camilo Mouriño, Calderóns Secretario de Gobernación for less than a year in 2008, have not ceased. Mouriño was a close friend of the president’s, one of his confidants and considered a likely candidate to run for president in 2012. His plane crashed in the posh Polanco neighborhood in Mexico City on November 4th 2008, shocking the country and igniting rumors about a possible assassination.
To be sure, Mouriño was a key figure in Calderón’s then fledgeling war against organized crimes and many citizens believed the crash to be intentionally planned by either opponents of Mouriño in the Calderón government or drug kingpins such as Joaquín ‘El Chapo’ Guzmán. Political assassinations have been part of Mexican politics since the inception of the republic, and the rumors therefore weren’t very surprising.
The investigation into the crash, however, indicated that the Learjet carrying Mouriño and 13 other casualties both in the plane and on the ground was an accident most likely caused by flight crew incompetence.
However, Blake Mora’s tragic death has renewed conspiracy theories. Federal deputy Gerardo Fernández Noroña, always keen to react, even claimed on Twitter that ‘the government isn’t able to protect its own officials.’ Ans as the preliminary investigations had barely started, the streets were already abuzz with plenty of rumors about sinister assassination plots against Blake Mora.
As more details on last week’s crash are revealed, however, once again it seems that the most likely cause of the crash was either incompetence by the flight crew, poor weather conditions and equipment, or a combination of the three.
One aviation expert I talked to last week (and who claims that friends of his are involved at the investigation) explained to me that the crash was most likely a CFIT, a Controlled Flight Into Terrain. This type of crash is one of the most common types of aviation accidents, responsible for more than 25% of all aviation deaths in the modern flight age. He chooses to remain anonymous due to the sensitivity of the ongoing investigations.
,,I believe there’s nothing sinister about the crash”, he said, ,, Most likely it was caused by haste. Mr. Blake Mora was very keen to go to the event he was supposed to attend in Cuernavaca. Apart from that, weather conditions were very difficult. The helicopter crashed at 8:55, but the wreck wasn’t found until around 11.00.”
A CFIT-type crash implies that the pilot was at least partly unaware of the position of the vehicle in relation to the surface, usually causing a completely unexpected impact. ,,There was a lot of fog at the time, and if you look at the remains of the wreck it is clear to me that the crash came very unexpected. If you take vertical speed and poor weather conditions into account, the cause of the crash was most likely disorientation.”
The final results of the investigation are yet to be revealed, but foul play seems less likely by the day. There might be, however, another serious matter to consider. When Mouriño crashed, recordings on the airplane’s black box indicated that the crew was unfamiliar with the type of plane it was flying and lost control of the aircraft. And now, with Blake Mora’s death, a combination of disorientation in poor weather conditions and haste seems to have caused the crash.
I am no airline pilot and the investigation has not been completed, but to me it seems that such a crash is fairly unnecessary. The fact that weather can be tricky in the valleys surrounding Mexico City is a fact well known to any aviation expert in the country, and pilots are supposed to be prepared to face them. When one of your passengers is the second most powerful man in the country (at least in theory), I would send top notch pilots who know what they’re doing.
Should the outcome of the investigation indicate that incompetence was once again the cause of the crash, the administration should do some serious thinking. Losing two of your most important cabinet members to bad piloting is the most tragically dumb way to lose lives and give yourself a hard time.