CAA crash in Goma
 

Radio Okapi reports that an F50 belonging to Compagnie africaine d’aviation (CAA) crash while landing in Goma today:

Un appareil Foker 50 de la Compagnie africaine d’aviation (CAA), une compagnie aérienne congolaise, s’est crashé ce lundi 4 mars 2013 en fin d’après-midi à Goma, capitale provinciale du Nord-Kivu dans l’est de la RDC alors qu’il amorçait les manœuvres d’atterrissage.
Selon une source de la compagnie ayant requis l’anonymat, l’appareil ne transportait pas de passagers.
Les détails dans les minutes qui suivent.

RDC : un avion de la compagnie CAA s

Sounds like it was the positioning flight.

Looks like a let410

The Let 410 is a stock image of an earlier accident.

Sad
 

theafricanaviationtribune.com reports an appreciable upgrade of facilities is underway, and then they have this? How sad

Seems to be a Fokker 50 not a Let 410

Anyone knowing the crew?

CAA Fpkker 50

Cpt. Alexander Bajinov, Russian
FO Emmanuel, congolese..

sorry I don t know the rest of the crew

Officially 9 people aboard - 6 crew including 2 pilots, 1 mechanic, 2 hostess and 1 baggage handler - 3 passengers all survived.
This is the 6th accident which resulted in a total hull loss for CAA which has been operating since 1993 but remarkably the first in which lives were lost.
Heavy rain, poor visibility and strong gusty winds were present at the airport at the time of the accident, but the airport remained open despite a directive to close operations during such occasions issued after the crash in Kisangani.
Residents in Goma reported hail at the time of the accident.
The aircraft hit power lines and trees on final before reaching the runway.
The ILS at this international airport has been U/S for 10 years already despite the presence of a large Monusco(UN) air base.
The VOR/DME is intermittent at Goma Intl.
Works on extending the runway by 500mts to 2500mts by removing the lava have NOT been completed after 4 years and hundreds of thousands of dollars spent.
No radar facilities exist despite being Congo's busiest airport.
No lighting of any sort exists such as RWY, PAPI or Approach.
Strangely similiar to Hewa Bora's accident in Kisangani in 2011 and the United nations accident in Kinshasa the same year.......all three accidents involved aircraft trying to land at international airports with non functioning ILS ground equipment which has been unservicable since 10 years during heavy rain.....:hmm:

Mobutu,
perfect picture of the (tragic) situation of the DRC Airports and aviation facilities..

if I remember well in september 2010 I found out the loss of a friend of mine in the accident of Bandundu from you, here in pprune..
not even 3 year are gone..and I lost another friend..that s sad...

Couple words about airport equipment in DRC. I have spent some hundreds of hours flying in DRC. It was a fun and nightmare simultaneously. In bad weather we used illegal GPS approach in every airport where no equipment existed. It was helpful to us. So, does anyone know if there is official GPS approach somewhere in DRC at present?

camp,
some airports like kin, lub, kalemie have RNAV approach pubblished on Jeppsen charts..it can be usefull..but not all the airplanes here are RNAV approved.
btw Goma has got only a VOR (as Mobutu said, intermittent) , 6° angle between the final course of the procedure and the rwy orientation and not even on the centerline..
many operators use to do what you said, especially approaching bush airstrips, creating their own procedures based on the threshold coordinates of their garmin...

nothing changed, unfortunately. so many pilots try to land in gisenyi instead of goma