This aircraft was serial number 5 and delivered new to the Royal Canadian Air Force on 5/23/61. AER acquired the aircraft on 11/13/70. This photo was taken a couple of hours after the crash and was taken at the end of the runway looking west to the crash site.

AER flight 501/90 was taking off on runway 27L, then 9349' long, at MIA enroute to Buenos Aires via Panama City, Lima, Santa Cruz and Asuncion when it failed to lift off and ran off the runway due to an external wooden elevator control lock left in place. The hydraulic actuator had been removed on September 15th, 12 days before, for repairs due to a leak. The flight engineer apparently failed to remove the gust lock during preflight inspection despite a comment from a company employee and a note left at the flight engineer's control panel. Four crewmen and two passengers were killed and two crewmen and 2 passengers survived. One vehicle occupant survived when his VW bus was engulfed in flames while parked on Perimeter Road at the end of the runway.

The aircraft destroyed the localizer monitor 400' off the end of 27L, the localizer antennae array 554' off the end of 27L and came to rest in a canal 961 feet from the end of the runway.

The NTSB crash report in PDF format is located at: http://www.airdisaster.com/reports/ntsb/AAR76-09.pdf