Part 4/10:
On the fateful night of the accident, Flight 708 was scheduled to take off from Tocumen International Airport, Panama City, with 152 passengers, mainly residents of Martinique, and eight crew members aboard, including a captain and a first officer. Unknown to the passengers, the pilots were under tremendous stress partly related to their overdue payments from the airline, which hadn’t given them a paycheck for six months.
The captain, with significant flying time but under heavy personal and professional strain, had been operating a restaurant to make ends meet, while the first officer, inexperienced but eager, struggled to assert himself in the cockpit.