American Notes NEW YORK

The crash of Avianca Flight 52 on Long Island's North Shore, which killed 72 of the 161 people aboard, was the first major air disaster in the U.S. since the United Airlines DC-10 crash in Iowa last July that killed 111. But for Colombia's national airline, it was the third serious mishap in eleven months. Counting last November's terrorist bombing of a Boeing 727, the disasters have taken 279 lives.

Bogota's El Tiempo reported that poor maintenance had caused two near crashes in the past two months, prompting indignant pilots to send a letter of protest to Avianca management. The pilots cited 37 failures of flight-control equipment on one plane alone between last October and December, said the paper.

In the Long Island catastrophe, Flight 52, bound from Bogota via Medellin to New York City, smashed into a wooded hillside in the wealthy community of Cove Neck. The absence of fire or explosion on impact and the lack of fumes afterward led to speculation that the 23-year-old Boeing 707 had run out of fuel only moments before it was supposed to land at New York's Kennedy Airport.

The disaster's most poignant aspect was the number of children on board -- estimates ranged from seven to 15 -- who were being flown to the U.S. for adoption. Because Colombian courts recess from Dec. 15 until Jan. 15, there was a backlog of Americans in Bogota who had received permission to bring their adopted children home. The approvals came just in time for some to catch Flight 52. At least two of the children are known to have survived, but the fate of the rest remained unclear at week's end.