Afriqiyah Crash: What happened?
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Contact photographer Martin Stephen
What: Afriqiyah Airways Airbus A330-200 en route from Johannesburg South Africa to Tripoli, Libya
Where: Tripoli’s runway 09
When: May 12th 2010
Who: 93 passengers and 11 crew (105 reported fatalities: 94 passengers and 11 crew) A child may have survived.
Why: In good weather conditions with winds of three mph, the flight was on approach to Tripoli International Airport which has no instrument landing system and the runway itself is not in good condition. The accident happened one minute before sea level sunrise may have had to deal with visibility problems flying toward the rising sun, or possibly patchy fog.
The plane crashed on approach to the runway and is fragmented as if a high speed impact.
The wreckage area is described as a debris field. Rescue crew and volunteers are on the scene and all bodies are said to have been recovered, with one possible survivor.
Afriqiyah Airways is owned by the Libyan government.
