LAM Mozambique flight crashed...
 

From their site:

Comunicado: TM470 Maputo - Luanda

A LAM - Linhas Aéreas de Moçambique, S. A. informa que o voo TM 470 que partiu do Aeroporto Internacional de Maputo às 11:26 horas de hoje, dia 29 de Novembro de 2013, com destino a Luanda, capital Angolana, tinha sua aterragem prevista para as 14: 10H, horas locais. Seguem a bordo 28 passageiros e 6 tripulantes.

Informações obtidas dão indicação da aeronave ter aterrado em Rundo, norte da Namíbia, fronteira com Botswana e Angola.

Neste momento a LAM, autoridades aeronáutica e aeroportuária estão empenhados em estabelecer contactos com vista a confirmação da informação.

A LAM prestará mais informações à medida que as investigações forem decorrendo.


Para informações adicionais, contacte o Gabinete de Comunicação Institucional da LAM, através de Norberto Mucopa: 82 7846815 e Irina Matos: 825777946.

Maputo, 29 de Novembro de 2013

Basically they suspect the plane could be hijacked or landed at Rundo, or in a AFB...lets wait and pray for the best !

PS: EMB190 type MPM/LAD

What was the origin and destination?

Maputo to Luanda.

Story here
Mozambique passenger plane carrying 34 missing: airline

Does not look good. There was a press conference of Ministery of Transport of Mozambique. They believe crash or emergency landing near Rundu in Namibia. Authorities are searching. Due to heavy rain hard to search.

...and here

BBC News - Mozambique plane missing with 34 on board

Press-Release: TM470 Maputo - Luanda
LAM - Mozambique Airlines, S. A. informs that its flight TM 470 departed from Maputo International Airport at 11:26 hours today, November 29, 2013, to Luanda, the Angolan capital, scheduled to arrive at 14: 10H, local Angola time has not arrived at its destination as scheduled.

Information obtained indicates that the flight has landed in a location in Northern Namibia, bordering Angola and Botswana near a place called Rundu. On board flight TM470 were 28 passengers and 6 crew members.

Currently LAM, Aeronautical and Airports authorities are establishing contacts with the authorities close to the location in order to confirm this information. LAM will provide updates as more information is obtained

Desaparecido avião das linhas aéreas de Moçambique - Expresso.pt

It seems that we can fear the worst by now, unfortunately...even LAM assumes the option of a forced land in the middle of the jungle, or even a crash. According last news no Namibian field received the E190.

No phone call made by any passenger or crew was also received...the WX in the zone its awful with violent thunderstorms and heavy rain, and the region where contact was lost its deep and dense forest...Lets keep fingers crossed...

The area where the plane went missing (The Caprivi strip) is not dense forest, it is a seasonal dry savanna / wetland, with patchy shrub and tree coverage, mainly grassland. In the rainy season (right now) the whole area turns into a water soaked bog which is practically inaccessible by any vehicle and very difficult to traverse even on foot.

I once did a helicopter landing on that kind of terrain, from the air it looks like nice terra firma, and even on touchdown one feels nothing special. As I got out, my feet immediately sank ankle deep into the soft ground. Looking around, the rear end of the skids already disappeared into the muck. Luckily we had enough power to get unstuck (otherwise the story would have had a very embarrassing ending) and I could direct the pilot to a harder patch some dozens of metres away, getting covered with mud knee deep in the process. I visited the same spot some months later and it was rock hard ground.

In case of a high energy impact the visible traces will be very similar to the Everglades Valuejet or Douala Air Kenya accidents - a water filled crater, barely distinguishable from other ponds littering the area, and a little floating and lighter debris thrown about.

The area has no mobile coverage aside the immediate areas of lodges and a few towers along the main road, so in case of a favorable outcome, if VHF is disabled survivors will have no means of communication until found.

The nationalities of the passengers were made public by the airline:
27 passengers, of which: 10 Mozambicans, 9 Angolans, 5 Portuguese, 1 French, 1 Brazilian ,1 Chinese.

Nationalities of crew not made public

Sadly Aircraft Found no survivors

Wreckage of Mozambican plane found | News24

If the Namibian Police are correct about the fire, it doesn't look as though it landed in water.

BBC:_

Namibia finds Mozambique plane wreck, all on board dead



The wreckage of a Mozambique Airlines plane that disappeared over Namibia has been found, but none of the 34 people aboard survived the crash, police say.

The burned-out aircraft was found in the Bwabwata National Park, near the borders with Angola and Botswana.

"The plane has been completely burnt to ashes and there are no survivors," Namibia Police Force deputy commissioner Willy Bampton was quoted by Reuters as saying.


The plane left Mozambique on Friday.



Flight TM470 took off from the country's capital, Maputo, at 11:26 (09:26 GMT) and was due to arrive in the Angolan capital, Luanda, at 14:10.



The last contact made with the plane was when it was over northern Namibia.
The authorities say most of those on board were Mozambican or Angolan, and several more were Portuguese. The aircraft also carried one citizen from each of Brazil, China and France.


Initially, the airline said there were signs the aircraft might have landed near Rundu. But on Saturday, Mr Bampton said villagers in the area had heard an explosion.


"Botswana officials informed us that they saw smoke in the air and they thought the crash happened in their country, but when they came to the border they realised that it was in Namibia," Willie Bampton said.


The Bwabwata National Park in Namibia's Kavango East region - covering around 6,100sq km (2,355 square miles) - is a sparsely-populated area of dense forests.

Possibly weather related. There were thunderstorms in the area at the time and particularly vicous storms are common here in summer.

First site photo on The Namibian:
http://www.namibian.com.na/public/Th..._size=xlarge_l

Not much detail but it does appear that the plane came down relatively intact and with a low energy, and was destroyed by a post-impact fire.

...as they are in the European or US skies on any average hot summer afternoon. T-storms don't just bring down a modern jet mid-cruise, unless there is a mess-up of monumental proportions a la AF447.

Its pretty weird and dont cease to "amaze" me how we can read more than 3 pages of a mere A343 PIC retirement&low pass, and now an entire fully modern was lost with all onboard, in very strange conditions, and it seems no one cares here...could it be the case (just a silly thinking of myself) that if it was in another continent we would be reaching now the 23 pages?

Andraz:

You dont appreciate just how vicious storms can get in southern africa.
On the same day they had hailstones bigger than cricket balls in Joburg, think what those could do to an engine. Pure speculation at this stage of course but these storms have a well deserved reputation, historically several aircraft have been literally torn apart in them. A double flameout is not beyond the realms of possibility and would be consistent with the apparant low energy of the crash.

The following accident might be a model for what happened, although the altitudes are different.
Southern Airways Flight 242 - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

Fabiol
Get more information from the accident site into the news and then watch the fur fly.
With so little information, what can one really say?

TAG

I do not doubt for one minute the nastiness of those storms, I have experienced their wrath myself. All I'm saying is that a modern airliner with wx radar and satellite forecasting has no business being anywhere near them. If in the end this does prove to be the cause, most likely it will not be the storms at fault...

Having a wx radar and know how to interpret it is a whole new subject. Sadly not enough training is done these days regarding the interpretation of the radar.