Luciano Rivera

Luciano Rivera (1930-1988), was a local mechanic injured in the Prinair accident in Santurce, San Juan, Puerto Rico, when the plane fell over an area where he and his friends were playing cards.

Out of the crash's survivors, Rivera was the worst injured one. He was on the burn center at Centro Medico in Rio Piedras (a San Juan area) for several months.

He became media sensation nationally in Puerto Rico because of the accident. Reports about his recovery were followed by local newspapers and television.

Rivera was able to sue Prinair successfully for the amount of $10,000 dollars. He was one of a handful of survivors that got money settlements from the small national air company. Prinair would later cease flying. After this accident and the Prinair flight 191 accident, much of the Puerto Rican public lost its trust in the airline's mainteinance of their airplanes.

Luciano Rivera's life went downwards after he got the ten thousand dollar sum. He was an alcoholic, and he faced heart trouble later in life. Living in the impoverished Residencial Las Casas area, he came back to the limelight towards the late 1980s as his condition deteriorated. Towards the end of his life, he became so sick that doctors told him he could eventually end up without any feeling in the lower parts of his body, so he had an emergency heart surgery in February of 1988, during which he died.

See also

*List of Puerto Ricans