A year on from one of the deadliest military aviation accidents in Colombia's recent history, the final investigation into the crash has contradicted its own preliminary findings. The C-130 Hercules, registration FAC 1016, went down on 23 March shortly after takeoff from Puerto Leguizamo in the southern department of Putumayo, killing 69 members of the security forces and leaving 57 survivors.

According to La FM, investigators from Colombia's Air Force and the US Air Force have now closed the case and attributed the crash to three factors: human error, excess weight and runway conditions. The full report was delivered to the Ministry of Defense roughly a month before the findings were broadcast, but it has not been made public — and that gap is at the heart of the confusion.

In April, Colonel Luis Fernando Giraldo Escobar, the FAC's lead investigator, told reporters the aircraft weighed about 133,000 pounds at takeoff, comfortably under the 139,000-pound maximum calculated for Puerto Leguizamo's short runway. Because passenger weight records were destroyed in the accident, that estimate was reconstructed from interviews and cockpit recordings. The final findings now say excess weight contributed to the crash, without offering a revised figure or explaining what changed between the two assessments.

The last seconds of the flight are better documented. The plane was flying 126 people — 113 soldiers, 11 FAC crew and two police officers — on a short hop to Puerto Asis. About four seconds after leaving the ground it clipped three trees in its departure path; investigators found branches up to 16 centimetres thick inside a damaged engine. The pilot warned passengers to brace, and the aircraft stayed airborne for roughly 36 seconds before crashing more than two kilometres from the runway. The runway itself is only about 1,200 metres long, and the FAC had already recommended restricting takeoffs from that end until nearby obstacles were cleared.

Key questions remain unanswered. The reported summary does not name the specific human error, say whether the tree-removal recommendation was ever acted on, or explain how weight and runway conditions combined. Those details matter both to the families of the 61 Army, six FAC and two police victims and to anyone assessing how such an accident could be prevented from happening again.