The report comes just a few days shy of the one-year anniversary of the accident, which fatally injured all seven occupants on board.
After analyzing radar data from the flight, investigators concluded the “sudden and abrupt lack of control” that caused the 43-year-old airplane’s rapid vertical drop about 10 minutes into the flight from General Mariano Escobedo International Airport in Northeast Mexico could have been prompted by a problem with the horizontal stabilizer.
The report ruled out weather or an inflight fire as potential factors, but investigators maintained that they could not definitively say what caused the crash due to the level of damage sustained by the airplane, whose debris was spewed across a 1,000-foot wide area.
The report also said the fact that the airplane was “operated by pilots in the extremes of the span of life, one who was 78 years old and the other who was 21 years old,” may have contributed to the crash, as well as the aircraft operator’s refusal to note failures identified by crewmembers during previous flights.
