[3][5] The reason for the University Orfeón's trip was to go to Barcelona, Spain, for the International Festival of Choral Singing, to begin on 4 September 1976, an invitation received two years earlier.

The total cost of the ticket with the flag airline Viasa amounted to the sum of 300 thousand bolivars and the Central University of Venezuela did not have such resources.

Given the impossibility of paying for the trip, the orfeonistas, with the approval of their director Vinicio Adames, organized themselves into a commission, and through the representative of the Federation of University Centers, in a meeting with the president of the republic Carlos Andrés Pérez, They requested the support of the Venezuelan Air Force, who offered a FAV plane, a Lockheed C-130H Hercules transport, to fly to Europe.

When requesting the weather reports they found out that there was a tropical storm parked over the Azores and that the Lajes Airbase (mandatory stopover of the transfer) was closed.

From there the FAV C-130H would continue its flight to France and the United Kingdom, where they would drop off another of its passengers, Colonel Alfredo Ramírez G., aeronautical attaché in London, along with his wife and son.

Shortly before finishing the distribution, the air base personnel informed the C-130H pilots that, according to a report received, at the time of arrival of the flight to the Azores the runway was going to be clear.