A passenger flight from Juba to Wau in the South Sudan landed, “missed the line,” and colliding with a fire truck. Seven or eighteen may have survived to be hospitalized but media reports vary wildly, from no injured to no survivors. Seven to eighteen people were reported hospitalized. Forty passengers and five crew were aboard. Russian databases say South Supreme operated two Antonov 26s EK-26310 and EK-26804, one of which is in storage) and one L-410 5Y-DAD.
In 2007 there was this Airbus A310 that failed to pass inspection in France and was therefore banned from French Airspace. The plane was still in use though. Yemenia Airlines quit flying the plane over French Airspace, limiting its routes to non-euro airspace like the hop from Sanaa to the Comoros.
Listen, I’ve heard some bad things about some planes but the descriptions I saw of this plane are so vivid I remember them, even though its been nearly five years. Frankly, the description sounded straight out of Romancing the Stone like the bus that takes Kathleen Turner (romance novelist Joan Wilder) to Cartagena, Colombia—crowded to the gills, livestock inside, seats rolling around, standing room only, everything that was portrayed in the movie, except (one hopes) people hanging off the outside of the plane. This rickety plane, which failed to meet safety standards continued to be in use until it crashed one stormy night in 2009.
Now, five years later, France is charging Yemenia Airlines with manslaughter.
I wonder at the timing. Apparently Yemenia Airlines is no longer on the EU banned list.
I wonder if they waited for Yemenia Airlines to become more solvent before they charged them.
I wonder if International Lease Finance Corporation is going to be held accountable. They leased the plane to Yemenia; and, like a father who hands his fifteen year old the keys to his car, they could have taken away the keys, or withheld them till the plane was brought up to code.
I wonder if the delay was five years worth of research, and maybe evidence found.
I wonder if another accident or enlightening incident happened that pointed the finger at Yemenia.
I wonder if it was pressure from the families of the 153 passengers and crew (and little Bahia Bakari the twelve year old miracle survivor) aboard that international flight from Sana’a, Yemen to Moroni, Comoros that crashed on 30 June 2009.
Pressure from the families brings change. I have a lot of confidence in family groups. Plane crash victims are united by a common cause, a cause which is ethical and pragmatic and yet impossible, because they are seeking justice when there can really be none. Because all these people want, if they could have their way, would be to have their loved ones back. They have the power of right on their side; and to make a galvanizing cause even more magnetic, they are fighting for the safety of every future airline passenger. I wish my friend Hans Ephraimson-Abt, who died last October, could be here to witness the charges being brought. He lost a daughter when her plane was shot down in 1983, and ever after made it his business to advocate for families. I think of him now because up until October, whenever I’d post an editorial concerning crashes, or family groups, he would always write back with encouragement, or some pithy bit of advice.
Maybe I should be objective. After all, helping families in crashes is my business. But when you’re on the front lines of aviation safety trying to get better treatment for victims and the families of victims, it doesn’t take long to feel very personal. There are a lot of people who saw those headlines that France is charging the carrier with manslaughter who think that after four and a half years, it is about time. I just hope that somehow the 152 victims—and Hans—could know that the responsible parties may yet be held accountable.
The pilot of an amateur-built fixed-wing Raven powered by a Lycoming engine was killed when he crashed into Long Island Sound eight miles north of Mattituck Inlet, on July 7, 2014. The pilot was alone aboard the plane. Divers recovered his body from the Sound and is in the custody of the Suffolk County Medical Examiner.
The submerged plane was still floating around noon, and a tow boat has been scheduled to tow it to Mattituck. Emergency responders included Coast Guard Station New Haven, rescue personnel, Suffolk County police marine unit and Southold EMTs, Jamesport Fire Department and Riverhead police.
A seaplane pilot witnessed and reported the plane going down about 9:30 a.m. Initially his Cessna was incorrectly reported as being the one that went down.
An investigation is underway.
An Austrian and an Italian passport used by passengers aboard missing Malaysia Airlines flight MH 370 were recorded in Interpol’s Stolen and Lost Travel Documents (SLTD) database.
INTERPOL is conducting checks on all other passports used aboard flight MH 370. They are trying with National Central Bureaus to discover the identities of the people using the stolen passports. Interpol also bemoans the countries who didn’t bother with security checks—those who waited for the worst to happen before putting in safety measures.
The question remains who were using the tickets? Were they Uighur, a faction well known to the Chinese, but not so well known outside of China?
Chinese investigators reported that one-way tickets bound for Europe that were used by the persons who used the stolen passports were provided by an Iranian purchaser over the phone, who said he was Kazem Ali. It was a cash purchase. The tickets issued Thursday from a Pattaya, Grand Horizon, travel agency. A number of countries are involved in the investigation, including the US due to the origin of the plane, and each country who had citizens aboard, but the investigation is led by the country where the plane is registered, Malaysia, is to lead the investigation.
At the time the passports were used for this flight, no one in Malaysia checked the database for the tickets, or else they would have been detected.
Eastern Airways flight T3-9625 made an emergency landing in Manchester, England, on July 24th.
The plane heading from Newcastle, England, to Geneva, Switzerland, was diverted due to indication of an engine malfunction.
The plane landed safely. Everyone aboard remained unharmed.
A replacement plane was arranged for the passengers.
Here are a couple of facts:
– Yemenia Flight 626 was an International Airbus A310-324 from Sana’a, Yemen, to Moroni, Comoros, that crashed on 30 June 2009 killing 152.
–French authorities charged Yemenia Airways with manslaughter over the Yemenia Airways crash.
–A judicial source said that Yemenia’s Airbus A310 “should not have been allowed to fly”.
–152 people died in the crash.
In spite of this, Yemenia announced they are “ready to challenge any allegation regarding the pilot’s competence, or the plane’s maintenance.”
They kept on flying a plane which was judged unsafe. Now Yemenia Airways is denying responsibility for the crash, which in all likelihood was a consequence of flying an unsafe plane.
Any way you look at it, no matter how vehemently they dismiss it, no matter how many times they make an “official” statement, in refusing responsibility for a plane crash on their watch —a plane crash which killed 152 people who trusted the airline to deliver them safely and which is clearly their responsibility—Yemenia Airways has displayed a disgraceful attitude.
A Turkish Airlines flight had to make an emergency landing in Irkutsk, Russia, on December 26.
The Boeing 737-900 plane was diverted while it was heading from Bishkek, Kyrgyzstan, to Ulan Bator, Mongolia.
The plane landed safely. There were over 150 passengers aboard at the time; all of them remained unhurt.
The plane resumed the flight after refuelling.
The reason for emergency landing is not clear at the moment, although it is suspected that bad weather or a technical glitch might have prompted the decision.