Another Russian Made A/C down...
 

16 dead in plane crash in Republic of Congo - Yahoo! News



16 dead in plane crash in Republic of Congo




Email
Print
By LOUIS OKAMBA, Associated Press – 1 hr 15 mins ago
BRAZZAVILLE, Republic of Congo – At least 16 people were killed when a cargo plane crashed Monday into a densely populated Republic of Congo neighborhood, according to witnesses and a cameraman who captured the plane's fall on video.
The Antonov 32 — owned by private company Trans Air Congo (TAC) — crashed in the Mvoumvou area of Pointe-Noire, the country's economic capital, burying several houses in debris.
Marc Ibata Ngassaki, a cameraman for state-owned television, said the pilot was able to get of the cockpit before the plane came to a rest.
He said he saw rescuers remove at least 16 bodies from inside, including three crew members.
Ambulances and medical personnel raced to the scene, and it was not immediately known how many more casualties there were or how many people died on the ground.
The Republic of Congo is often overshadowed by its much larger neighbor, Congo — the scene of numerous crashes involving aging Soviet planes.
In October 2007, at least 50 people were killed in the Congolese capital, Kinshasa, when an Antonov 26 crashed during takeoff. In 2008 a DC-9 passenger plane overshot the runway in Goma in the country's east, killing at least 44 people.

Did some flights into Angola about a decade ago. The Africans blame russian downed aircraft on mechanical failures, truth is many were getting shot down at the time. Into Louanda we did a rappid decent/approach from the ocean. Russians were cheap, wanted to save gas. Why do more Russian aircraft crash in this region than any other?

For the same reason that more Renaults break down than Ferraris, that there are more of them. I suspect that if you converted the raw figues into percentages the picture would look different.

The aircraft in that region are badly maintained and badly piloted in many cases. It's more of a reflection on the operators that they crash frequently than on the manufacturer. The same applies in Iran where they have had a number of TU-154 crashes.

You can count all properly maintained and otherwise legal AN-12s on two hands and none of them in Africa. A bit like L1011 but much worse.

was my bet

I'm sure he did :rolleyes:

Video: Final moments before Congo plane crash captured - Telegraph

The aircraft in the video is an AN-12, not an AN-32 as mentioned in the first post.