MEJORADA DEL CAMPO, Spain -- Investigators today investigated why an Avianca airlines jumbo jet crashed within sight of the Madrid airport on a mostly clear night, killing 185 of the 196 people on board.
Avianca's European director, Rodolfo Amaya, said in Paris that the airline's final death count was 185, saying they had initially undercounted the total number of passengers and crew.
One of the 11 survivors said the Colombian jetliner, coming from Paris, appeared headed for a normal landing early Sunday when the engine on the end of the Boeing 747's right wing caught fire.
Patrick Negers, 29, a Frenchman, said the passengers then 'heard a sound, as though the plane landed, but not on a smooth runway, something like a terrain of rocks.
'Three seconds later there was another jolt and that's when everything blew up.'
Negers, his wife Elizabeth, 26, and their two children, Kathy, 3, and Ludovic, 20 months, sitting in the middle of the cabin near the emergency doors, were among the 11 survivors of the disaster.
'At first I thought it was just a nightmare, that I was dreaming,' Neger told French television.
'My first instinct was to protect my two children. Then, when I came to, it was like a miracle. My wife and two children were alive, lying in the rubble.'
Doctors said today that although their medical conditions varied all the survivors appeared to be out of immediate danger.
A team of 20 medical examiners worked in an airport hanger to identify the 175 charred remains dug from the smoking wreckage of the Avianca airlines jet before nightfall Sunday.
The local judge overseeing the task, Modesto Gomez, said it was going to be 'an arduous and difficult' task given the state of most of the bodies and it would be at least 10 days before all victims were positively identified.
An Avianca spokesman in Madrid said the dead included Peruvian writer Manuel Scorza, Argentine writer Marta Traba, her husband, Uruguayan critic Angel Rama and Mexican novelist Jorge Ibargueingoitia.
The writers were traveling to a literary conference in Bogota at the invitation of Colombian President Belisario Betancur.
Also among the dead were five childless Swedish couples traveling to Colombia to adopt children, the Swedish adoption agency said.
Civil aviation officials said a fire in one the jet's engines would not alone have prevented the plane from landing safely.
Spanish Transportation Minister Enrique Baron said there was no obvious explanation but aviation officials expressed hope the 'black box' flight recorder recovered Sunday would provide some answers.
Investigators recovered the recorder at daybreak amid piles of charred bodies and wreckage strewn for a mile over the hills of vegetable fields and brush.
Hugo Bernal Cortes, 30, of Colombia, who managed to scramble to safety carrying two children, said it was 'hard to explain' how the jet could have crashed on a mostly clear night into treeless hills with the runway lights in plain view.
The flight originated in Frankfurt and stopped in Paris before heading to Madrid. It was to have continued on to Caracas and Bogota.
The control tower at Madrid airport lost contact with the jetliner after it was cleared for landing shortly after 1 a.m. Sunday.
Authorities said the plane apparently grazed one hill, bounced, hit another, then flipped over on its back and smashed into a third hill with its landing gear straight up.
'It was a miracle,' said survivor Carmen Navas, 31, of Venezuela, who said the disaster 'happened too fast' to remember things clearly. 'The plane jerked, the wing exploded and it fell,' she said.
Miss Navas said she climbed out a broken window and wandered for 10 minutes in shock around the flame-lit site until police arrived. She was led to a car murmuring over and over, '747, 747.'
Spain's last major air disaster was in September 1982 when 50 people died in the crash of a chartered Spantax DC-10 at the Malaga airport on the southern coast.
In the worst air disaster in history, 582 people were killed March 27, 1977, when a KLM 747 crashed on takeoff at Santa Cruz de Tenerife in the Canary islands and into a chartered Pan American 747.
