Missing aircraft (with Aussies) Yaounde - Mbalam
 

Hey does anyone know anything about this? Big news just reported in Australia and can't find who they were flying with or what sort of aircraft? Missing in Cameroon or Congo. :uhoh:


Australian mining bosses' plane missing | The Australian

aircraft missing from Yaounde
 

Anyone have more news - have they located them ?
Apparently S&R was to continue from sunrise today ?
Any idea who the operator was ?

No further news yet from any source.:confused:

They Departed On A Casa 212. Nothing Else Known At This Stage.

missing
 

I hope they find them soon, and hope no fatalities.
Any idea whose CASA 212 it was - government, military or charter ?

might be a N reg'd C212 probably for Evergreen or another Yank contractor. Saw a few job ad's for them last year in the region

The aircraft has been missing in excess of 24 hrs at this point, and no word has been heard from anyone on the ground, or in the air.
The isolated, relatively trackless region, where the aircraft was last heard from, approximately 25 mins after takeoff, has little by way of communication facilities. No distress messages were sent by the PIC of the aircraft, before contact was lost, and no emergency/distress signalling has been reported.

The chartered flight was from Youande in Cameroon, SE to an airfield at Yangadou, in the area of a village known as Mbalam, which is right near the Congo/Cameroon border. The flight left early Saturday, local time, and was expected to be approximately one hours duration.

Despite Talbot owning an 18 seat Bombardier BD-700, which was at Youande, the smaller CASA 212 was chartered to take the mining executives to the relatively rough and short airfield at Yangadou, because the BD-700 of Talbots was unable to land at the Yangadou airstrip.

The Cameroon and Congo Govts have sent out search aircraft... but I wouldn't like to pontificate on how quickly the wreckage of a CASA 212 would be found, in that heavily vegetated area.
Mining people who know the region, state that the area where the aircraft has been lost, is thick rainforest.

The media is now starting to say that it is highly likely that there are no survivors from the crash. The Cameroon Govt and military still appear to be confused on the number of pax and crew, stating either 9 or 10 in total. 10 appears to be correct.

Currently identified pax on board...

The entire Board of Directors of Sundance Resources (6 people)...

1. Geoff Wedlock (non-executive chairman of Sundance Resources). Former head of BHP Iron Ore division in Australia.

2. Don Lewis - Civil engineer. CEO of Sundance Resources and former MD of Multiplex Engineering.

3. Don Talbot - Non-executive director of Sundance, and its biggest shareholder via his personal investment vehicle, Talbot Group. He founded MacArthur Coal, one of Queenslands biggest coal producers.

Recently in the news as being charged with paying secret commissions to the former Queensland government minister Gordon Nuttall, who was found guilty and jailed for accepting bribes. Talbot was to face court in August and intended to plead not guilty to the charges.

4. Craig Oliver - Non-executive director of Sundance, and an Accountant.

5. John Jones - Non-executive director of Sundance, and GM of HWE Mining.

6. John Carr-Gregg - Lawyer, and Company Secretary of Sundance Resources.

7. Natasha Flason Brian - Talbot Groups senior female assistant - a French national who was resident in Australia.

Two other currently unidentified pax, who are possibly African business executives.

This loss is a serious loss to the mining business community of Australia, with the majority of those lost, being high profile people with long records in the mining industry. Trading in Sundance Resources shares will be suspended upon opening of the ASX, Monday 21st June.

unconfirmed
 

Plane with Australians, other foreigners 'missing': Cameroon < French news | Expatica France

Cameroon on Sunday confirmed that a flight chartered by a mining firm with 11 people on board -- six Australians, two French, two Britons and an American -- has been missing since Saturday.
Communications Minister Issa Thiroma Bakary said the CASA C-212 twin turboprop disappeared during a flight from Cameroon's capital Yaounde to Yangadou in northwest Congo-Brazzaville.
"The aircraft had on board 11 people, including nine passengers and two crew members, comprising six Australians, two French, an American and two Britons," he said.
The Australian government earlier said that the plane was carrying a group of mining executives and that it was "seriously concerned" for those on board.
Bakary said the aircraft was operated by a Congo-Brazzaville company,

Aero-Service, The official site of Aro Service in the Congo Brazzaville

JetPhotos.Net Photo » TN-AFD (CN: 398) Aero Service CASA C-212-300 Aviocar by Michael Fabry

TN-AFA CASA 212-100
TN-AFD CASA 212-300

"It left Yaounde international airport on Saturday June 19 at 9:13 am with an estimated arrival time of 10:20 am local time" or 0920 GMT," he said. "The last contact took place at 9:51 am"

Does anyone know if the FA was Ken Talbot's personal FA or crew from the chartered aircraft.....very sad news for all pax and crew's family involved. I hope good news will come out of this in the end.....

Sad news indeed.

While it makes sense to have all concerned with the project go and see it, it does beg the question of why the whole board of directors allowed itself to be on the same flight.

Many companies limit the number of key people on the same flight.

What ? just like the Polish govt then.

I guess nobody likes to face the reality that it CAN all go horribly wrong.

Not sure of the prudence of putting all your eggs in one basket, particularly if that basket happens to be an African owned and operated Casa, but well we all have different " comfort zones" I guess.

Something like this can happen anywhere, anytime... the ground is always waiting to grab you, we all know that. However, the likelihood of an event like this, does always seem to have increased chances of happening in Africa.. :suspect:

One does have to question the wisdom of all the company directors travelling together, though. I'd say not too many readers here today, remember the event of the BHP companys Cessna Citation that left Perth, bound for the Eastern States in the early 1990's... and which ran out of motion lotion just past Kalgoorlie... because the PIC forgot to fill up... :ugh:

He put her down (rather skilfully, fortunately) on a firebreak, quite a number of NM East of Kalgoorlie, where the vegetation was thankfully, very thin. All aboard walked away without a scratch... however, I'd guess that all aboard broke out the new brown corduroy pants to hide the stains, immediately after they climbed out, too.

It was an extremely fortunate event, whereby there was no fuel for fire, forgiving vegetation, and smooth ground where they put down. It was an event that could easily have wiped out the entire board of BHP, and it sent ripples throughout the entire business community. From that day on, BHP has forbidden the entire board to ride together in the one aircraft.

onetrack

Goodness I'd forgotten about that one, I see you and I are of certain age.:\

This one does not have any direct parallels beyond the make up of pax.

There was a fair bit behind that story but my increasing decrepitude renders me unable to access the finer details from the cobwebby recesses for the moment. But I will. Yes he ran out of juice but it was the why that was more fascinating.

Some of it is slowly coming back :{ but some alleged elements of the recent Polish crash with their President on board echo. Meetingitis?.:sad:

unconfirmed
 

Two Cameroon military reconnaissance plane searches seemed to indicate that the missing plane might have crashed in Cameroon’s south regional town of Djoum, located some 200km south east of Yaounde, officials said earlier today.
"Residents in Djoum said they saw explosions in the air on Saturday,” said a Cameroon official.
Djoum is located some 200km from Yaounde and about 250km from Mbalam, where Sundance has its flagship iron ore project.

Rudd promises full search for mining executives as Wilson Tuckey links trip to resources tax | The Australian


Cameroon authorities and officials from Sundance are heading the search, which is expected to resume at first light, which is about 4pm AEST on Monday.
A day's search has failed to find any conclusive evidence of a crash. Mr Smith said the plane, carrying a seventh person, an Australian permanent resident, made its usual procedural check-in halfway through the hour-long flight.

Sundance execs forced to take same plane | News | Business Spectator

Another old mining executives crash
 

Here is another incident that shows mining executives have short memories when it come to putting the important people together in one plane. If memory serves me correctly, this was key guys from Noranda Mines:

CKVR Television Tower : History

I remember this one very well since a friend and I pulled the silver crown avionics from the wreckage at the then King City airport and re-built them to fly in my friend's C175. What a mess a tower makes of a Beech Baron!

Cameroon and Congo Govt and military searchers have now been joined by the French military; as it has now been reported - accurately it seems - that the total complement aboard the CASA 212 was 11 - 6 Australians, 2 French nationals, 1 American, and 2 Britons.

Locals from the small village of Djoum, advised searchers that they heard an "explosion in the air" on Saturday morning.
Initially, these reports were discounted - but it now appears that more weight has been given to them, as Djoum is not far off the flight path of the CASA 212.
The flight path appears to have possibly run several NM N/NE of Djoum, and near a large forest/wilderness area known as Dja Reserve.

The villagers may have heard the actual aircraft crash into the jungle and thought it happened in the air. Searchers are now concentrating in the Djoum area, and local pygmy tribespeople are being requested to help, as they know the forested areas well. There is only one road in the area. The pics below show the road, and the vegetation around Djoum. It's obvious that jungle with a decent canopy exists in much of the area.
As most of you probably well know, an aircraft crashing through jungle canopy can often make only a small hole in the canopy, and it makes the finding of wreckage, extremely difficult indeed.
Another problem has been regular morning fog, which is making searching even more problematic.


http://i50.tinypic.com/2enos3o.jpg

http://i49.tinypic.com/2zgzxpz.jpg

gaunty & onetrack
Just to politely correct your collective memories, the Cessna Citation incident was in the early 1980's. The aircraft was westbound for Kalgoorlie from the Eastern states and belonged to B.H.P. North not B.H.P. I went out for a sticky beak about 2 hours later. Considering the low cloud base at the time of the incident he was very lucky to find a fire break right in front of him, which fortuitously was a adjacent to a road.
There was unfortunately a more serious accident in 1988 again involving most of the senior members of a mining company.
I fell very saddened by the current uncertainty as I know several of those missing.

Wreckage found. No Survivors.
 

Pom Pax - Thanks for the corrections on the details of the BHP North Cessna Citation incident. Yes, I knew it was quite a while ago, but didn't realise it was that far back.

I'm saddened to hear of the "no survivors" result, but I think anyone with a realistic view would have known all along, the chances of survival in this unforgiving terrain are low.

I'm a little surprised at the location of the wreckage. According to reports, it was found "on the western ridge of the Avima Range in Congo, near the Gabonese border", and about 10kms from the Avima Iron Ore mine. Contractors from the mine are currently planning to cut an access track to the wreckage from the mine.

Because the location of the wreckage is far from a direct route from Yaounde to Mbalam, one has to suspect that the miners requested that the pilot of the CASA 212 do a detour so that they could view the iron ore operations at Avima, before circling back through the "iron ore country", that is located on the Congo/Gabonese/Cameroon border, and on to Mbalam.

Because of the description of the wreckage site, on the slopes of the Avima Range, one has to suspect that this was a simple CFIT, possibly due to pilot unfamiliarity of the area, fog, or possibly because of a request to go lower to view operations... or possibly a combination of all the preceding.


http://i48.tinypic.com/oup7y8.jpg

onetrack
 

There will be a detailed investigation, I am sure, due to the Australian contingent and high profile of the deceased.
Without speculation, as the investigation will hopefully reveal the facts...
Given the lack of fuel availability at the remote airstrips, the distant alternates and the need for round-trip fuel - the aircraft would most likely have had a lot of fuel ( fuel-payload ) on board.
Add 11 souls on board - the aircraft would have probably been at close to RTOW ex Yaounde, and likewise ex Yangadou. ( short unprepared airstrip, acceleate/stop, accelerate/go, no anti-skid, gravel strip )
On the flight path / route..... what if an engine failed en-route, would they have been able to driftdown and maintain ? Perhaps they were doing an in-flight diversion ?
The CASA 212 is FAR 25 certified, non-performance class A ( stand to be corrected ).
In reality, this mission should have been split into two trips, with a Part 121 / Perfrmance Class A aircraft - more expensive, but safer. Partly to split the executive board, and partly to have better aircraft performance with the reduced weight.
I am surprised that this solution was decided upon, given the availability of alternative options.

However, let the investigation reveal the facts and let us all learn from this. This was a tragic loss of life, perhaps unnecessarily so.