An-12 Down In DRC

[napoleon]

Just had word an An-12 has gone down between Goma and KIndu! The wreck found 2 hrs ago burned out with 2 engines feathered ???????????? Sad to say 20 presumed killed.

[BUSHJEPPY]

gosh! Congo-RDC wants to be number one in crashing aeroplanes. Sudan will need to catch up now.

It was Victoria Air.

[AdamCG]

Plane carrying 24 people missing in Congo-official

KINSHASA (Reuters) - A plane carrying 19 passengers and five crew members has gone missing in eastern Democratic Republic of Congo, a senior civil aviation official in the vast central African country said on Wednesday.

"An Antonov-12 took off from Goma at 0800 GMT. It was expected to go to Kindu but the last contact we had with it was three minutes after takeoff and it has not arrived in Kindu," Raymond Sangara, head of the civil aviation authority in eastern Congo, told Reuters by telephone from Goma.

He said another aircraft had been sent to look for the plane but had so far found nothing, while two United Nations helicopters also sent to search had not yet reported back.

Kindu lies roughly 400 km (250 miles) southwest of Goma.

A five-year civil war which ended in 2003 destroyed much of Congo's infrastructure. Planes are often the only way of covering huges distances in a country the size of Western Europe.

Ten people were killed earlier this month when an Antonov plane flown by a Ukrainian crew crashed into trees and caught fire near Congo's northeastern city of Kisangani.

At least 350 people were killed when an Antonov cargo plane crashed into a crowded market in the capital Kinshasa in 1996, while in December 2003 an Antonov-26 crashed into a market near the town of Boende, 600 km (375 miles) from Kinshasa.

05/25/05 12:39

[Recuperator]

How can anything good come from lip service as from our Nr.1, Mr. Mbeki, with the recent conference held in Sun City with regards to making Africa a safer place to fly if we are faced with cadets already flying for "reputable" airlines in SA, not making SAA selections and not getting fired for being an embarrassment to the respective aviation companies IN SOUTH AFRICA.

Now, taking this, nobody doing anything either about companies operating cheap, poorly maintained eastern block aircraft.

Mankind's biggest fault is that in our greed we become our own worst enemy, and consequently many more will die before something is done to rectify the matter.
Then again, this is Africa, is there anybody out there that cares???:confused:Ce la vie...:yuk:

[gofer]

An Antonov with 22 Pax and 5 crew reported down shortly after starting from Kindu for Kondolo with all reported killed.
German text from the Basler Zeitung (BaZ) (http://www.baz.ch/news/index.cfm?ObjectID=15285891-60CF-2062-F4059556A13F2D1B)

Another source reports in English 21 pax and 5 crew all killed (http://www.newsday.com/news/nationworld/wire/sns-ap-congo-aircraft-missing,0,4039646.story?coll=sns-ap-nationworld-headlines)


RIP Gofer:sad:

[Flying Mech]

To Pax & Crew R.I.P. Somethings in Africa never change. i Unfortunately in 15 years time the same standard of A/C,ATC & Pilots will still be killing PAX. Africa is hard place to stay alive in due to corruption,war,disease,etc,etc

[catchup]

Is it the 3rd or 4th cargo ship which crashed in the last couple of years in Kongo former Zaire?

regards

[BUSHJEPPY]

do you mean the last couple of months?

then yes!

[catchup]

Months?

Can't remember very well. But I remember that once an Antonov visited the market place of Kinshasa.

regards

[Richard Taylor]

Although Africa is the "Antonov" continent these days,& Sharjah the "Antonov" airport,we get a regular supply of Antonovs(mainly AN26/AN12,& also the AN72/74) here too,from various operators,all flying oil freight.

The AN12s have been known to travel as far as Africa on occasion.

It is nice to see the diverse operators and aircraft here(makes a change from the helis)but you do wonder,especially with the turbos,just how old & airworthy they are.Presumably they are cheap to hire,but is this why?

My condolences.

[BUSHJEPPY]

One AN-8 (!!!) with registration EL-WVA (!!!! Liberian registered) in January.
One An-26 on 5th of May, hit a tree.
One AN-12 yesterday.
That makes 3 in 5 months.

[Nopax,thanx]

If I'm not mistaken, aren't there also still some AN-8's still flying (two-engined smaller variant) which are so old and unsafe that Antonov has withdrawn the type airworthiness?

Although we in the developed world moan about Health and Safety issues sometimes, this does serve to remind why we have safeguards in the first place. Deepest sympathies for the guys who took the ultimate risk..

[southender]

I know that Russian aircraft always seem to carry an enormous number of crew members but what would be the normal complement for an AN-12.

If this one was carrying passengers, presumably there would be one cabin attendant, leaving 4 cockpit crew.

Also, are there any regular passenger AN-12s, I believed they were freight only, although in Africa anything can happen.

[Papa Owfa]

Condolences to all involved with this.

[swish266]

Recup

As far as I remember one reason Russian a/c are used in Africa is they are easy to maintain... And can take a lot of punishment. All monkey AFs have been flying them for ages and also giving some hot chase to SAAF first world pilots...
Who, by the way like to fly them these days...
;)

[BUSHJEPPY]

crashed 30 minutes after t.o. from Goma. Probably overloaded, one engine fails and you go down into the mountains of the Kivu, even with 3 engines.
AN-12 are not licensed to carry passengers. In the Congo, there are always passengers sitting on the cargo.
Correct, the AN-8 has no more TC. EL regs have all been cancelled in 2002 following UN sanctions on Liberia of Charles Taylor.

[policepilot]

266
Perhaps you ment to say 'can go for long periods without being maintained'. The Ant 8 and 12's we saw in the DRC are knacked. It frightening to see both wingtips with deep gouge marks and rolls of gaffer tape over large areas.
I doubt there's any auditing and the only reason they're there is they're the cheapest and possibly unable to fly in many other other countries.
Yes, the folks at the Antonov Design Bureau make good planes, but like everything else, if you don't look after it, it breaks.
(yes, there are numerous An12 in Europe too, but there're not Liberian registered, etc,, although they do look spectacular sliding sideways off the runway at Exeter airport. That was safely registered in Lithuania)
The ruskies there earn peanuts and spend large amounts of time away from home. I don't envy them.

[Shamrock 602]

Reuters says the wreckage has been found, and that it's thought there are no survivors.

Just back from the eastern DRC... plenty of old Antonovs knocking around. Sobering thought for all.

Shamrock 602

Crashed plane found in Congo, 26 presumed dead

KINSHASA, May 26 (Reuters) - An Antonov plane was found smashed at the bottom of a cliff in eastern Congo on Thursday and all 26 people on board were presumed dead, a senior aviation official in the vast central African country said.

The Antonov-12 went missing in eastern Democratic Republic of Congo on Wednesday with a Russian pilot, four Ukrainian crew and 21 Congolese passengers on board, Raymond Sangara, head of the civil aviation authority in eastern Congo, told Reuters.

"I saw the plane and it had been completely destroyed after it smashed into the cliff. I don't think anyone could have survived that crash," Sangara said after returning to the provincial capital Goma from a search and rescue mission.

"The place is completely inaccessible so we would have to fly by helicopter to get down and see if there are any survivors," he said.

He said the plane had crashed near a village called Bunyakiri, around 80 km (50 miles) southwest of Goma, from where it took off at 0800 GMT on Wednesday. It had been due to fly to Kindu, some 400 km southwest of Goma.

A five-year civil war which ended in 2003 destroyed much of Congo's infrastructure. Planes are often the only way of covering huge distances in a country the size of Western Europe.

Ten people were killed earlier this month when an Antonov plane flown by a Ukrainian crew crashed into trees and caught fire near Congo's northeastern city of Kisangani.

At least 350 people were killed when an Antonov cargo plane crashed into a crowded market in the capital Kinshasa in 1996, while in December 2003 an Antonov-26 crashed into a market near the town of Boende, 600 km from Kinshasa.

[Deanw]

From News24:


Crashed plane located in DRC

27/05/2005 10:06 - (SA)

Kinshasa - The wreckage of an Antonov transport plane which crashed in eastern Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC) was located on Thursday, according to the plane's owner, the private DRC company Victoria Air.

The ill-fated plane had been carrying 21 passengers, all from the DRC, and five crew members — two Russians, one Ukrainian, one Belarussian and a DRC Victoria Air official Malira Mavos said. There were believed to be no survivors.

An earlier toll given by a military source after Wednesday's crash had spoken of 27 dead.

"The wreck was located in the afternoon by a reconnaissance flight... in the town of Bitale, near Bunyakiri, in a mountainous region of Sud-Kivu," said Mavos.

Air traffic controllers said the plane disappeared from their radar screens 30 minutes after it took off on Wednesday.

The Antonov had been chartered by another firm, Maniema Union.

It had been scheduled to stop off at Kindu in the central Maniema region before going on to Kongoloa, in the mineral-rich Katanga province.

Another Antonov cargo plane crashed on May 4 killing 10 people at Kisangani in the DRC's east and accidents of this type are frequent in the country where runways are sometimes poorly marked and craft are often overloaded.

[4granted]

Oh of course, Goma radar, Love getting vectors for the ILS into the Lava Pit....

4g

[steamchicken]

There's also been 2xIL-76 losses this year - one in Sudan and one into Lake Victoria. And another AN12 was wrecked at Riyan in the Yemen. (UN-11007, a veteran of Air Bas, Irbis and a few other Viktor Bout companies.) EL-WVA, if I remember rightly, was an illegal registration and no-one knew the aircraft's true provenance.

Anyone know the reg of this one?

[an-124]

How the hell did they get 26 pax in an An-12?
It is an unpressurised freighter??

You can only fit the flight crew + 3 pax max. ?????


Any news on the operator?? or the reg??

[BUSHJEPPY]

you have to know that in some countries in Africa, people turn up to the cargo only aircraft just before departure, pay the crew some dollars, and they board. If you are lucky, you might sit on a plastic chair, otherwise you make youself comfortable on the boxes or bags. One AN-12 in Sudan went dow on fire because some passengers were cocking tea with a petrol burner in the hold that was loaded with hazardeous material. Lethal combination.

Nobody knows how many passengers this military transport took, some estimations are up to two hundred that were sucked out of the hold:

Status: Preliminary
Date: 08 MAY 2003
Type: Ilyushin 76MD
Operating for: Congolese Air Force
Leased from: Ukrainian Cargo Airways
Registration: UR-UCB
Msn / C/n: 0063467003
Year built: 1986
Engines: 4 Soloviev D-30KP-2
Crew: 0 fatalities / ? on board
Passengers: 7 fatalities / ? on board
Total: 7 fatalities / ? on board
Airplane damage: Written off
Location: near Kinshasa (Congo (Democratic Republic))
Phase: En route
Nature: Military passenger
Departure airport: Kinshasa
Destination airport: Lubumbashi-Luano (FBM)
Narrative:
Ilyushin 76 UR-UCB was leased to the Congolese Ministry of Defense by the Ukrainian company Ukrainian Cargo Airways and operated in Congo since December 2002. On May 8th, soldiers and and their families boarded the transport plane for a flight from Kinshasa to Lubumbashi. The aircraft also carried some military vehicles. About 45 minutes into the flight the rear cargo door opened in flight, causing decompression of the cargo hold. A number of passengers were sucked out. The plane returned safely to Kinshasa. Seven people were confirmed dead by a government spokesman, while others estimate many more may have been killed (maybe even around 60).

[policepilot]

Station calling Goma,, say again your call sign. Radar,, you make me larfff. And the runways only 'sometimes poorly marked'.
Yet call me tomorrow and I'll try be on the next flight out.

[poorwanderingwun]

The one thing that I've learned while flying around the Congo is that EVERYTHING....everything from the tiniest microbe through the animal world, the population and up to the largest storm systems...EVERYTHING...is out to Getcha !

And just because I'm paranoid doesn't mean it isn't true...:uhoh:

[steamchicken]

Reg may have been 9Q-CVQ, which is also a B707 at Kinshasa. Strange, that..

[Gunship]

In Angola the 727 guys took $500 to $1k per pax, but that was in a an aircraft where they can "fit"in not an AN 12 :hmm:

Blame the crews that do this practise .. then again most are dead now ... :sad:

[BUSHJEPPY]

Not CVQ, but rather 9Q-CVG with unknown MSN (source: www.aviation-safety.net)

And indeed this reg also belonged to a 707-358C of Hewa Bora, now been scrapped in Kin and to a 707-320C of Katale Transport, destroyed in 1990 at Goma.

But it could also have been 9U-BHN (Burundi). It has been seen lately in Goma but flying for Mango Airlines.

Anybody out there that knows the correct reg or MSN?

[Grizzly Bare]

Lots is made by many people about different aircraft seen at different times with the same Congolese registration.
The Congo has a large aviation fleet, but is one of the unfortunate countries with only 2 registration letters available, rather than the 3 most of us are used to. All Conglese civil aircraft are registered in the series 9Q-Cxx.
This means that Kinshasa has to "recycle" registrations much faster than most other countries, and coupled with the high attrition rate of Congolese aircraft, the same registration letters can be reallocted twice in a year.

[napoleon]

This aircraft belonged/s to the same person as the UG registered L10-11 mentioned on this forum from time to time. Hey GB u know the DRC system well! ever come in useful?

[napoleon]

poorwanderingwun having spent many years in the wonderous country I have suffered a lot but I never quite thought of it as you have. Very well put I must say!!!!! eveything is not only out to get you!!!! it "WILL" get you eventually. Like a bad woman .. draws you in sucks yah dry and spits yah out pennyless!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
:ok: :ok: