THE cause of the crash of a charter aircraft carrying German tourists home from the Caribbean, which is believed to have killed all 189 on board, was still a mystery last night.
The German government said the 757 had no formal permission to land in Germany and questioned whether the aircraft was insured raising broader questions about airline safety, especially on holiday flights.
Aircraft and boats searching the shark infested waters off the Dominican Republic's north coast yesterday found bodies, empty life rafts and debris scattered over two sq miles. Most of the passengers on the aircraft, bound for Frankfurt and Berlin, were German holidaymakers. Most of the crew members were Turkish.
At least 69 bodies were recovered and brought to Puerto Plata in the Dominican Republic, the German ambassador, Mr Edmund Duckwitz, said.
The aircraft was a Boeing 757, the second to be lost within two months. An American Airlines jet crashed on the approach to Cali in Colombia in January.
The Dominican Republics, charter airline, Alas Nacionales, had chartered the aircraft from Birgen Air of Turkey, but only decided to use it for the flight at the last moment. Alas was shut down temporarily in 1993 after failing to meet international safety standards.
German pilots raised the possibility that a cut price package deal had led to reduced safety standards. "We were almost waiting for such a crash," said Mr Oliver Will, a spokesman for the German airline pilots' association Cockpit.
"Such low prices can only be offered by saving money one maintenance, repairs or crews - a potentially fatal development."
A spokesman for Hamburg based Oeger Tours said the airline switched aircraft from a planned Boeing 767 to a Boeing 757 shortly before takeoff because the 767's hydraulic pump was not functioning properly.
But Ms Rosemarie Meichsner, a spokeswoman at Schoenefeld airport in Berlin, said the aircraft had been switched because the flight was underbooked for a 767 which holds about 300 people. The 757 holds 224 passengers.
In Frankfurt, German tabloid reporters posed as relatives of passengers yesterday as frantic next of kin sought news, an airport spokesman said.
Two reporters from the mass circulation Bild daily, posing as grief stricken relatives, slipped past security staff and got into the lounge, where passengers next of kin were being counselled by a team of doctors and priests.
There were similar scenes at Berlin's Schoenefeld airport. One man in his mid 40s, sobbing and with tears running down his face, failed to get through the scrum of journalists and bolted upstairs to take refuge in an office.
"Most people already know when they get here. I've never seen anything so horrible as this in my whole life. That you (journalists) are stopping them from getting by makes me mad," said Ms Marianne Bartel, working at Schoenefeld's information desk.
PA adds:
The pilot in the Kegworth air disaster in which 47 people died has received a six figure sum in compensation from his employers, seven years after the accident.
Capt Kevin Hunt suffered spinal injuries and has been in a wheelchair since his British Midland Boeing 737 crashed on the M1 embankment at Kegworth, near Nottingham, in January 1989.
A crash inquiry found that Capt Hunt and his co pilot had a fire in one engine but responded by shutting down the wrong engine, causing the aircraft to land short of the runway at East Midlands airport.
But in 1992 he issued a writ against the airline for damages.