Colombia's deadliest military aviation disaster in decades claimed at least 69 lives on March 23 when an Aerospace Force C-130H Hercules crashed seconds after takeoff from Caucayá Airport in Puerto Leguízamo, Putumayo, according to a joint statement by armed forces commander General Hugo López Barreto, Defence Minister Pedro Sánchez and air force chief General Carlos Silva. Four personnel remain unaccounted for.

The aircraft was carrying 128 occupants — 115 army soldiers, 11 air force crew members and two National Police officers — bound for Puerto Asís, roughly 200km away within the same department. The plane hit the ground 1.5km from the end of the runway, setting the fuselage ablaze and causing onboard ammunition to detonate. Of the 69 confirmed dead, 58 were army personnel, six belonged to the air force and two were National Police officers. The military deployed two aircraft equipped with 74 beds to airlift survivors to hospitals in Bogotá and Florencia. Local residents rushed to the crash site on foot and on motorcycles to assist wounded soldiers before formal emergency services arrived.

The tragedy laid bare chronic neglect of a remote municipality that serves as a strategic military hub yet lacks the most basic infrastructure. Mayor Luis Emilio Bustos told Noticias Caracol the airport was "inadequate," citing a runway he described as dangerously short for an aircraft of the Hercules' size and weight, and pointing to a near-total absence of maintenance resources and professional oversight. He added that the perimeter fencing is so deficient that "cows sometimes wander onto the airstrip," and called on the presidency, the civil aviation authority and the national government to intervene urgently, saying the municipality lacked both the technical capacity and the funds to manage the facility safely.

The local hospital, which should function as a second-level facility, operates in practice at the most basic level of care, with barely any medicines and no surgical theatre, the mayor said. Critically ill patients must travel eight hours by river to reach better-equipped facilities, as there is no road access to the town. The municipality has no internist on staff, deepening the level of medical precariousness in a town now overwhelmed by scores of casualties.

Aviation analyst Erich Saumeth, speaking to AFP, noted the aircraft had been donated by the United States in 2020 during the government of Iván Duque and underwent a full engine overhaul three years later, casting doubt on mechanical failure from poor maintenance as the primary cause. Defence Minister Sánchez said the aircraft had been declared airworthy with a qualified crew and that there was no indication of an attack by illegal armed groups.

The US-made Lockheed C-130 Hercules platform has been a backbone of Colombian troop transport since the late 1960s. 

Lawmakers have previously flagged concerns over maintenance, citing a string of aviation incidents that have killed more than 30 military personnel in recent years. Critics have also pointed to weak budget execution for aircraft maintenance as a structural vulnerability, according to congressional debates.

The accident has ramped up political tensions ahead of Colombia’s May 31 presidential election, with opposition figures, Paloma Valencia, Claudia López, Mauricio Cárdenas accusing President Gustavo Petro of failing to adequately maintain military equipment, according to El País.

The debate has extended to procurement priorities, including a planned acquisition of new Swedish Gripen fighter jets, with critics arguing that transport capacity and operational readiness require greater focus.

Speaking to reporters, Petro said the crash "should never have happened," denouncing what he described as "longstanding obstacles" to military fleet modernisation driven by "bureaucratic difficulties." The incident comes just weeks after a Bolivian Air Force C-130 carrying a shipment of banknotes crashed in the city of El Alto, narrowly missing a residential block and killing 24 people.