The investigation into the crash of a Nature Air charter flight in Costa Rica that killed 12, including 10 Americans, on New Year's Eve took an eyebrow-raising turn when the General Directorate of Civil Aviation suspended the carrier's operating certificate at the end of last week. The suspension was attributed to the airline's inability to assure safe operations with the loss of three senior executives, but it follows claims by the former operations manager that Nature Air operations were irregular.
On Jan. 8, a team of agents from the country's Judicial Investigation Agency gathered documents from two Nature Air offices and from the DCAG, the government entity responsible for overseeing civil aviation. The following day, Jorge Valverde Esquivel, the airline's operations manager resigned after reportedly telling the DGAC that there were "irregularities in the operation of the company," according to the Costa Rica Star.
The resignation of Valverede brought to four the number of employees Nature Air has lost recently, and in a Jan. 11 letter to the airline, the DCAG said Nature Air is no longer sufficiently staffed to ensure safe operations. It noted Valverde's resignation, the extended sick leave of the airline's safety director, Rodney Duran, and the death of the pilot, Juan Manuel Retana Chinchilla. A second pilot, Emma Ramos Calderón, also died in the crash.
Nature Air provided both scheduled domestic and regional flights and charters on single- and twin-engine aircraft. It had been hired to take nine tourists and their American guide from the Pacific Coast Province of Guanacaste. The group was traveling in a single-engine Cessna 208B, but shortly after takeoff on New Year's Eve, it crashed into the side of a mountain.
Today, the Costa Rica Star reported that the bodies of all 12 victims had been released to their families, with the last of the 10 Americans repatriated to the United States at the end of last week. Photos posted on a Costa Rica website showed the loading of the caskets of William and Zachary Steinberg onto a Copa Airlines airplane. William was a student at the University of Pennsylvania, and Zachary studied at Johns Hopkins. They were on vacation with their parents and younger brother Matthew. They were from Scarsdale, New York.
