The Twin Otter, designated FAP-205, had departed Rio Hato air base at 10:44 that morning with Captain Azael Adames at the controls and Sub-Lieutenant Victor Rangel as co-pilot. Torrijos was traveling with his mechanic Carlos E. Rivera, Sergeant Ricardo Machazek, bodyguard assistant Jaime Correa, and dentist Teresa Ferreiro. They stopped at Penonome Airport at 10:55 for a brief layover, then continued toward Coclesito at 11:40. The weather was poor -- low clouds and fog wrapped the mountains -- and Panama's radar coverage at the time was limited enough that when the aircraft vanished from screens, air traffic control did not declare an emergency for nearly a full day. Residents of Coclesito heard two explosions through the fog but could see nothing. A search party formed from the community found no wreckage that day. It was not until 11:30 p.m. on August 1, with U.S. military assistance, that searchers located the first remains on Marta Hill. The aircraft was destroyed except for its tail section.

Torrijos had stepped back from the presidency in 1978 but remained the most powerful figure in Panamanian politics. His death sent the military government into disarray and triggered nationwide grief. On August 4, a state funeral was held at the Metropolitan Cathedral in Casco Viejo, Panama City's colonial quarter. Torrijos was initially buried in Casco Viejo, then later moved to a mausoleum at Fort Amador in the former Canal Zone. Panama's main international airport, Tocumen, was renamed in his honor -- a gesture that would be reversed in 1989 when the United States invaded to depose Manuel Noriega. The political vacuum left by Torrijos ultimately enabled Noriega's rise through the ranks of the National Guard, which he transformed into the Panamanian Defense Forces. The consequences of that single flight rippled through Panamanian politics for the rest of the decade.

The 1983 official investigation concluded that pilot error caused the crash -- a failure of situational awareness and poor decision-making while attempting a visual approach in near-zero visibility. Investigators found no mechanical defect in the aircraft. But the public and the victims' families rejected this conclusion. Coclesito residents complained that their testimony about hearing two explosions was excluded from the final report. The crash occurred just months after Ronald Reagan took office and only three months after Ecuadorian President Jaime Roldos Aguilera died in a strikingly similar aircraft accident. Speculation ranged from a Noriega-orchestrated assassination to CIA involvement. Author John Perkins, in his book Confessions of an Economic Hit Man, alleged that American operatives planted a bomb aboard the plane, motivated by Torrijos's negotiations with Japanese businessmen over a potential new sea-level canal. Noriega's own defense attorney, Frank Rubino, claimed in 1991 pretrial hearings that Noriega possessed documents showing CIA assassination attempts against both Noriega and Torrijos. The presiding judge blocked these documents under the Classified Information Procedures Act. Then the original investigation documents disappeared during the 1989 U.S. invasion of Panama. They have never been recovered.

Today, the crash site lies within Omar Torrijos National Park, established in 1986 and named for the general who died on its slopes. The park's cloud forests, hiking trails, and waterfalls draw visitors to the same mountains that swallowed the Twin Otter. In Coclesito itself, the rural house where Torrijos once met with local residents and held political gatherings has been converted into a memorial museum. Each year, the Democratic Revolutionary Party -- the party Torrijos founded -- commemorates the anniversary alongside peasant and indigenous communities from across the country. The case was officially declared unsolved due to insufficient evidence. Whether the fog alone brought down FAP-205, or something else hid within it, remains one of Panama's most persistent unanswered questions.