Avensa Flight 358 was a scheduled airline flight from Maturín Airport to Simón Bolívar International Airport in Venezuela that crashed on 22 December 1974 killing all 75 people on board.

[1] On 22 December 1974, the McDonnell Douglas DC-9, with 69 passengers and 6 crew on board, took off on runway 05 from Maturín Airport.

[2] In command was 49-year-old Captain Diógenes Torrellas Leon, a veteran pilot with 25,000 hours of flying time, and the First Officer was Norberto Vivas Uzcátegui.

The pilots lost control of the aircraft and crashed 32 km (20 mi; 17 nmi) from the city of Maturín, Venezuela.

[2][3] Venezuelan authorities and the United States National Transportation Safety Board (NTSB) investigated the accident.