A group of Germans arrived in Puerto Plata, not to vacation as do more than 230,000 German nationals who visit the DR each year, but rather to honor their relatives who died tragically 10 years ago when the plane taking them back home crashed into the Atlantic Ocean. German ambassador Karl Koehler said the air accident was “a tragedy that united our two countries in profound grief for the loss of our compatriots”. El Caribe reports on flight AWL 301, which crashed on midnight on 6 February 1996 with 189 persons on board only four minutes after take-off from Gregorio Luperon airport in Puerto Plata en route to Frankfurt. The aircraft, which fell just 25 kilometers northeast of Cabarete, was chartered from Turkish company Birgenair by Dominican company Alas Nacionales to perform a charter flight. There were 176 passengers on board; 164 were German tourists and the rest were Polish. The crew was made up of 11 Turkish citizens and two Dominican flight attendants. There were no survivors.