Air France: it wasn't our plane
     Air France says it had leased a jet which hit a mountain near
 Bogota, Colombia last night, killing 53 people.
     The airline says it leased the Boeing 727 from TAME, the
 Ecuadorean military-run carrier.
     The flight originated in Paris, and was heading on to Quito,
 Ecuador after a short stop in Bogota.
 (Were Air France or TAME pilots flying it?  Jim)
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        Little left to search for after Colombia plane crash
       * Airline: Plane was just used by Ecuadoran president
     BOGOTA - April 21, 1998 1:25 p.m. EDT - The pulverized fuselage
 of a Boeing 727 was still smoldering Tuesday 18 hours after it slam-
 med into a Colombian mountainside, killing all 53 people on board.
     Rescue workers sifted through the remains of the aircraft where
 it crashed Monday afternoon shortly after takeoff from the city's El
 Dorado airport.
     But police and other officials conceded they had given up hope
 of finding survivors, as bright yellow life jackets and airline
 safety instruction cards hung helplessly from surrounding trees.
     The plane, which belonged to Ecuador's military-run TAME airline,
 was believed to be traveling at about 170 mph when it strayed myster-
 iously off its assigned flight path and plunged into the Cerro El
 Cable mountain in overcast and rainy weather.
     It had been leased by Air France for passengers arriving in
 Bogota from Paris for a connecting flight to Quito, Ecuador. No
 official list of the victims and their nationalities has been made
 available yet by Air France or TAME, but up to 27 of the 43 passen-
 gers are thought to have been Europeans.
     An Air France spokeswoman in Bogota said Bjorn Hornfeldet, a
 Swede and regional director of Electrolux, was among the victims.
 Company officials brought chainsaws to the crash site Tuesday morning
 to help police clear an area where a makeshift heliport was to be
 built.
     The 727-200 careened into the mountain with such force that that
 debris from it showered down on a residential area of Bogota. And
 though its nose encrusted on one side of the mountain, overlooking
 the city, most of its wreckage hurtled over to the opposite side.
     The aircraft's three engines plunged down a deep canyon.
     Body parts were still scattered helter skelter amid small bits
 of the aircraft early Tuesday, as Red Cross officials and investiga-
 tors with the prosecutor-general's office moved to cover them with
 black plastic bags.
     Police said up to 60 people from nearby slums raided the crash
 site late Monday, emptying wallets and picking up anything of value,
 including the ring finger of a hand separated from one victim's
 body.
     Virtually all that was left Tuesday, when a team of Reuters
 journalists visited the site, apart from oxygen masks and a deck of
 Air France playing cards, was partly burned clothing, battered suit-
 cases and old shoes.
     A photo of two newborn babies in a hospital nursery and a Christ-
 mas card saved months after the holiday by one passenger were among
 the few items of sentimental value left on the ground.
     The broken fuselage, the biggest piece of which appeared to be
 no more than about six feet wide, was strewn across a half-mile area
 and much of it was badly charred.
     A man's foot and hand stuck out amid tangled cables and seat
 backs in one part of the smoking wreckage. A torso and crushed leg
 were visible nearby, along with the deck of playing cards.
     The Colombian manager of TAME, Enilio Erazo, told reporters the
 727 aircraft was in perfect condition when it took off from Bogota
 Monday afternoon.
     "Our motto is that only the plane gets more attention than the
 passenger," he said.
     Col. Julio Alberto Gonzalez, Colombia's acting chief of Civil
 Aviation, said an official probe into the crash would focus on how
 and why it strayed off course.
     "The investigators will have the final say," Gonzalez said in
 one interview, insisting that Bogota's air traffic controllers acted
 as quickly as possible to avert the crash.
     The TAME air crash was the worst in Colombia since Dec. 20, 1995,
 when 159 people died when a Boeing 757 operated by American Airlines
 flew into mountains near the southwest city of Cali.
     Officials said the latest disaster over Colombia's jagged Andean
 peaks could have been much worse, however, since it occurred just
 outside the densely-populated capital.
     Two teeming slums, known as El Paraiso (Paradise) and Mariscal
 Sucre and home to about 20,000 people, are nestled into the flanks
 of Cerro del Cable, less than two miles from the crash site.
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