A Colombian airliner that crashed and broke into three pieces Monday following a stormy approach to a Caribbean airport resulted in a single fatality, apparently because the Boeing 737 was flying relatively slow, hit at a shallow angle and no significant fire erupted, according to pilots and aviation safety experts.

Colombian authorities said the seven-year-old Boeing 737-700 operated by the closely held Aires airline crashed during an early-morning thunderstorm while trying to land at the Colombian resort island of San Andrés off the Nicaraguan coast. All but one of the 131 people aboard survived, though the plane reportedly slammed into the ground short of the runway, breaking up and shedding portions of engines and landing gear.

It skidded on its belly with such force that the nose and front section of the cabin ended up on the runway behind a rear portion of the fuselage. Officials believe the death of a 68-year-old female passenger resulted from a heart attack, not the impact of the crash.

Emergency responders said 125 passengers on the flight, which originated in Bogotá, were taken to hospitals, four with serious injuries. Early reports from the scene indicated that emergency crews helped to quickly evacuate passengers and prevented a major fire—both critical factors in reducing fatalities.

But the accident, according to safety experts, also is bound to raise questions about why the pilots attempted to land amid what Transportation Minister German Cardona subsequently said were "very difficult" weather conditions, including reports of gusty winds and intense lightning. The pilot, identified by local television reports as Wilson Gutierrez, said the plane was struck by lighting less than 90 yards from the approach end of the runway, according to Gen. Orlando Paez of the National Police.

Lightning frequently hits aircraft, and it could have distracted the crew or even interfered with critical flight-control systems, safety experts said, but no modern Western jetliner in recent years has been brought down by a lightning strike. A Boeing Co. spokeswoman said Monday that the company will provide technical assistance to Colombian crash investigators, and the U.S. National Transportation Safety Board said it will also participate in the probe.

A major reason for the high survival rate was that the pilots appeared to lose control close to the ground, according to local officials, initial statements by the crew and foreign safety experts. Col. Donald Tascon, deputy director of Colombia's civil aviation agency, told the Associated Press that trouble may have cropped up suddenly at perhaps 100 feet above the ground, which meant the plane had less momentum than if it had plummeted from a higher altitude. According to the AP, the pilots didn't report any emergency to the control tower.

Many jetliner landing accidents result in scores of fatalities, intense fires and, in the worst cases, aircraft careening off the end of strips at high speed and then breaking into pieces after slamming into natural or man-made obstacles. One Colombian official said it was a "miracle" that all but one passenger survived Monday's crash. But a high survival rate isn't a rarity in the recent annals of jetliners that crashed at relatively low speeds within sight of their intended runways.

In early 2008, a Boeing 777 jet flown by British Airways PLC had a nonfatal crash landing just short of London's Heathrow International Airport when both engines lost power because of ice contamination of fuel systems. The plane was badly damaged after landing on its belly in a grassy area bordering the runway, but nobody was killed and 13 of the 152 people aboard were injured.

In good weather, a Turkish Airlines Boeing 737-800 crashed short of Amsterdam's Schiphol International Airport in February 2009, after pilots failed to notice or properly respond to a malfunctioning altimeter. The crash killed nine people and injured 120 aboard.

In late 2009, an American Airlines Boeing 737-800 carrying 148 passengers and six crew members skidded off the runway while landing in stormy weather in Kingston, Jamaica. The plane was badly damaged, dozens of passengers received minor injuries and seven were hospitalized, but there were no fatalities.

The low-cost airline, Aerovias de Integracion Regional SA, known as Aires, is Colombia's second largest after flagship carrier Avianca.

Some passengers suffered light burns as they were sprayed by the jet's fuel in the crash, Gen. Paez said, adding that one of the plane's engines caught fire but airport firefighters were able to quickly extinguish it.

Heriberto Rua, who was traveling with his wife and five children, told a radio station everything was routine until the plane was about to land "and I felt that we were struck by something."

Write to Andy Pasztor at andy.pasztor@wsj.com and Darcy Crowe at darcy.crowe@dowjones.com

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