News: Afriqiyah Airways Flight 771

Plans for a memorial to the victims are underway. Though even without a memorial, family members will never forget. Maybe family members of the victims would like some answers with their platitudes.

While theories abound on why the Afriqiyah Airlines A330-200 Airbus did not land level but appeared to have slammed into the ground while at an angle of descent, actual news of the investigation has been very thin. The latest news released is that the remains of the South African victims of the crash have just been brought home to South Africa.

The Disaster Victim Identification Authority in the Netherlands assisted in determining remains of more than 60 Dutch tourists. Dutch forensic experts, renowned for expertise in disaster identification techniques in indentifying badly mangled bodies from either plane or automobile accidents, were engaged to help determine identities.

38 of the Dutch aboard were travelling with the Stip travel agency, 24 were travelling with the Kras travel agency, and 9 had booked their tickets independently.

On June 21st, Afriqiyah Airways announced they had begun clearing the accident site. Access to the site is limited to the restoration teams until after it is restored to its previous condition, a state of affairs that has upset some family members who have requested access.

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    Afriqiyah Black boxes in France

    On Thursday, the cockpit voice and data recorders of the Afriqiyah Airways Airbus A330-200 which crashed in Tripoli were brought by Naji Dhaw the Libyan investigator to France to be examined to ferret out the details of why the flight crashed. Only the NTSB (US) and the BEA(France) are equipped to read the boxes.

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    Afriqiyah Crash: What happened?


    Click to view full size photo at Airliners.net
    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.

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    Afriqiyah Airways A330 crash investigation

    The insurers have had months to move this case along.
    They had months to compensate the families of victims. Have they done so?
    Word is that they have not.

    The one year anniversary of the crash is on May 12.
    Look at what we have. No compensation.
    Look at the debris field. Do we have spoliation of evidence? Common elements like weather wreak havoc on evidence. Just look at what rust does and you have a pretty good idea of the kind of details can be erased by weather. So if the evidence has been defaced by exposure to the elements, how might spoilation of evidence affect the case? No doubt it will result in a series of failed attempts. Failure to secure evidence. Inability to analyze degraded evidence. Obfuscated results.

    For crash investigators, fresh evidence can be as easy to read as a book. Waiting until the evidence is unintelligible leaves us with no Rosetta Stone to help us get to the cause. Another missed opportunity to make aviation a little safer. Another missed opportunity to bring closure to the families who were immeasurably damaged by this crash.

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