THE crash of a chartered airliner with many Germans on board brought warnings yesterday that people should resist the temptation of bucket-price offers to dream destinations.
The safety of chartered airlines was the predominant theme in the German media, alongside pictures of weeping relatives being consoled at Frankfurt and Berlin airports, where the Boeing 757 had been due to land.
The airliner crashed just after take-off from the Dominican Republic on Wednesday with 13 crew and 176 tourists, most of them German.
US and Dominican searchers said they had recovered 128 bodies from the wreckage and would continue searching for at least one more day. They held out virtually no hope of finding any survivors in the shark-infested waters.
The German Chancellor, Dr Helmut Kohl, extended his condolences to relatives of the victims, and the German parliament observed a minute of silence.
"No one who saw the pictures of relatives at the airport could fail to feel deep sorrow," Ms Rita Suessmuth, president of the lower house of the parliament, said.
Bild, two of whose reporters had posed as next of kin at Frankfurt airport to gain access to relatives, reported that two of the dead were returning from their honeymoon; and had left two children from earlier marriages as orphans.
German charter airlines like Condor, LTU and Aero LLoyd escaped the brunt of public criticism which was mainly directed at cheaper foreign competitors.
The crashed airliner belonged to a Turkish airline, Birgenair, and had been sub-chartered by a Dominican operator, Alas Nacionales. German officials said Alas Nacionales had failed to seek approval to fly to Germany.
It had been chartered by a Hamburg travel company. Oeger Tours GmbH, a major force in Germany with 700 million D-marks ($470 million) of sales revenue.
"We have practically been waiting for such an accident to happen, said a spokesman for the pilots' association, Cockpit. Chartered aircraft were often poorly maintained and crews inadequately trained and overworked, he said, adding: "The cheapest ticket is not the best."
Aviation experts said they doubted that the crash had been caused by lightning, as had been suggested by Oeger Tours, because modern airliners were equipped to cope with that.
Passengers at Frankfurt airport said the crash had made them more wary of taking the cheapest flight. I value my life. 1 have enough fear of flying anyway. 1 tend to fly commercial airlines," said Ms Denise Ortiz, who was departing on a scheduled flight.
Reuter reports from Puerto Plata in the Dominican Republic:
US and Dominican searchers have recovered 128 bodies from the wreckage of the German charter flight that crashed into the Atlantic, Dominican officials said yesterday.
An exact count of the recovered bodies was made somewhat difficult because private Dominican boats joined in the search with Dominican navy and US coast guard vessels. Most of the bodies were brought to a makeshift morgue on the wharf of Puerto Plata, where two refrigerated trailer-trucks were parked.
Searchers said they planned to spend at least one more day scanning a 5,800 sq km area of ocean.
The Boeing 757 nosedived into the Atlantic just five minutes after take-off late on Tuesday. The aircraft's flight data recorder, known as the "black box", is believed to have sunk to the ocean floor, nearly 1,200 metres down.
The US navy has sent high-tech undersea search equipment to the Dominican Republic to probe the ocean floor.