AN12 crash in Khartoum

[Contract Dog]

Just saw Juba air cargo take off from Khartoum, teardrop, return to land, overweight and then a big black cloud of smoke at the end of the runway. The storys at the airport are that they came back to land after loosing a donkey, touched down and a chopper took off in front of them, they tried to avoid it and veered off and crashed on the northern apron. Doubt there were survivors.

RIP guys

Dog

[ab33t]

Cant find anything on the news feeds? Anybody?

[pilotwife]

http://africa.reuters.com/top/news/usnBAN824322.html
Take a look at this site

[B737 lover]

Strange circumstance, i can't wait to hear what exactly happened to these skippers!

[Long D]

How many planes need to crash and how many have to die before authorities do something about air transport in this country? It is a piety to hear that the same thing going on and on.

Where are the inspectors, the personel that issued and granted licences? Under what criteria were they issued? Who ever checked an airline operating in this nation and its personnel, its operation, its maintenance records????? Are we so naive being supersticious "inshaa alla it will be done" or live up to it.

What is the cost of human life and how significant do we value it? I guess all that matters is how much gets into the pockets. Safety is an attitude of life, and is mandatory for airtransport.


Long D.

[alexmcfire]

Longy, 36 AN-12 has been written-off during the last 7 years, they are bound to fly till they crash or turn into scrap. Amazing sturdy planes, but everything got to end somehow...

[pzu]

Apparently there were 2 ground fatalaties following the recent AN-12 crash at KRT

see http://www.sudan.net/news/posted/15519.html

PZU - Out of Africa

[MungoP]

All of us who have experience of Africa (excluding SA) have become used to watching ancient Russian a/c clawing their way off the ground and rocketing skyward at a rate of climb sometimes exceeding 20 feet per min generally relying on the curvature of the earth to gain altitude... These old soviet era a/c are among the ruggedest and toughest ever built but they now operate in an environment where economics rule and maintenance is often relegated to the bare minimum.... coupled with a tendency to be grossly overloaded it doesn't need a dramatic failure to bring one down.... any small reduction in available power will turn a marginal climb capability into a descent... In my last year in Congo there were 13 a/c losses in september alone... 12 were ex Russian transports.

At the very least a ruling could be made to ensure that these aging beasts should not be allowed to exceed 80% of their design MTOW... but that isn't going to happen and even if it did the corruption endemic to Africa would prevent the rule from ever being enforced so just remember before leaving home to take your steel reinforced umbrella.

[Contract Dog]

Turns out that a further 9 people were killed when a fire engine in town saw the smoke and decided to save the day. In the blind rush and panic to get to the airport, they managed to push a bus off the road and kill 9 people.

It took the fire department an hour to put out the fire, this was not suprising as all of the fire trucks were using water, not foam to put it out!!! so if you do plan on crashing, best you dont do it in KRT, you wont get much help from the fire department!

The problem as Mungo put it is the overloading. The crew on those a/c are paid by local companies who bay the lads $1000 per month, they then get extra cash per KG they fly over.

I watched that A/C claw its way into the air and can promise you that it was at least 20% over weight, then it returned to land immediately, no fuel dump on that old girl, so she must have been 40 odd % over landing weight? they have crap brakes and no reverse, just ground fine, so with one engine out stopping must be near impossible. That with assietric ground fine on one side looks like it caused the a/c to veer to the 2 live engines and into a wall.

thats my 2 cents on it?

Dog

[B737 lover]

Is there any Aviation Authority in Congo? Because these type of i should call them careless accidents are just getting too much.

[MungoP]

737 lover : Is there any Aviation Authority in Congo?

There most certainly is a CAA, but like all authorities in that benighted country it reeks of incompetance and corruption.. as an organisation responsible for overseeing aviation safety it's laughable, it's used simply as a way of extracting money from operators. Certainly they will try to identify operators that breach the laws, but only so that they can become a scource of income to the inspectors.

In addition to blatant and gross overloading of freight it often transpires that pax are found among the wreckage in many accidents... on purely freight configured a/c... this is due to the underpaid crew accepting money from people wanting to hop a ride to some place or other, ( Congo has no transport infrastructure worth the name ) the pax then sit on the freight with their bags. One that went down in South Kivu a while back had 20+ illicit pax on board.. DR Congo is another world...

[RobinB]

:ugh: Welcome to "the rest of Africa". Life is very cheap in Africa. No democracy = no "check and balance" as any first world country's citizens could expect. If the "chief buggers" in those local CAA offices flew with the operators, things would change. yeah, Riiiiiight, and pigs can fly !!!!!!!!