Early Monday morning, at 1:49 am local time, flight 8250 of Colombian airline AIRES crashed while landing at San Andrés Island (Gustavo Rojas Pinilla International Airport) after a flight from Bogotá (El Nuevo Dorado International Airport). Early reports disagreed on the number of passengers but more recent reports settled on 131, composed of 125 passengers and six crews. The fuselage broke into three major pieces, yet there was only one fatality (a woman between 65 and 68 years of age who suffered a heart attack shortly after the accident and died on the way to the hospital) plus four serious injuries.

The accident aircraft was a Boeing 737-73V registered HK-4682 (SN 32416 / LN 1270) delivered to easyJet in 2003 and leased by AIRES from AWAS in March 2010. This was the first hull loss of a Boeing 737-700. It was the second fatal accident involving a 737-700. (The first was on 8 December 2005 when Southwest Airlines flight 1248 overran a snowy runway at Chicago (Midway) after a flight from Baltimore/Washington International Thurgood Marshall Airport, killing a passenger in an automobile.

San Andrés Island is in the Caribbean Sea, northwest of the main body of Colombia. The closest airports are on islands; the closest non-island airport is at Bluefields, Nicaragua (shown on the map below in addition to the path of the accident flight).

Additional information may be found at:

• NTSB team dispatched to San Andres in Aires crash investigation — Flightglobal
• Crash Landing Aires Boeing 737-800 San Andres Island, Columbia — Aviaton News
• ASN Aircraft Accident Boeing 737-73V (WL) HK-4682 San Andres Island-Gustavo Rojas Pinilla Airport (ADZ)
• AIRES Flight 8250 — Wikipedia
• Photos of HK-4682 — Airliners.net

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