.. that is appallingly bad taste lomapaseo := :(

I used to fly out of douala a while back and that wx report is pretty basic. The crash site of niete was also very weird as it lies 40nm south of FKKD ( there is an airstrip there) and that is way off track. I understand the difficulty in locating the aircraft as that forest is dense, actually until you see it you have no idea how thick it really is, however the terrain out to the east of doulala is quite flat.
KQ is one of the better airlines in africa maintenance and fleet wise and to prang due to a thunderstorm seems highly unlikely especially with a well equipped aircraft, but only the investigation will give us a true account of the events.
My condolences to all involved :(

A link to Kenya's Sunday Nation newspaper. (It may require you to register, but was free IIRC)

http://www.nationmedia.com/dailynation/

Pole sana.

So do I get this right? The aircraft last communicated with the tower 11 minutes after departure, thereafter nothing. And a few hours later, an ELT signal is received somewhere in Soutwestern Cameroon?

Obviously, if an ELT goes off when an airplane is missing, you'd look there first. Only, ELT's do go off all the time, 90% or more of alerts are false alerts. I wonder if they are looking in the right place, after all, the location is far off. Or do the airliners ELT's send out an identification? The ones I know basically transmit only a homing signal on 121.5 and 400 mhz for the satellites.

Kind of reminds me of the search efforts in Indonesia not too long ago, where such signals were also reported totally in the wrong place.

Best regards
AN2 Driver

So, this was a prang caused by Murphys Law?...It's good to know that!

Add to the list of missing passengers is one Mauretanian citizen, the remaining
5 still unknown.
Name of the crew and some of the passengers can be found here http://www.eastandard.net/hm_news/ne...eid=1143968249.

042300z
 

Matt,

Wx you have given us is from 050200Z. Plane took off around midnight (042300Z).


A lot of lightning reported in the area.

Claims have been made that Cameroon state radio has reported that the wreckage has been found, no news on the people onboard....:confused:

Medias start saying plane found at Awanda,near Mvengué,SW of Yaoundé,yet to be confirmed.

Man, they haven't even found the crash site yet? what about the Sat Emergency beacon?

Found, not found…

First Cameroonian State Radio reported that the crash site has been found and now they say it has not been found…


Yaounde - Cameroon's state radio said on Sunday it did not have sufficient evidence to confirm its earlier report that a missing Kenya Airways plane with 114 people aboard had been found in southern Cameroon.

"Earlier we broadcast a report that the plane had been found at Awanda, but for the time being we do not have sufficient evidence to confirm, to be completely sure, that the plane has been found," the radio station said. - Reuters

ELT?
 

I thought that the new generation ELT (provided it transmitted!) would send on 406MHz to a satellite that would relay to a center (in Italy for Kenya?) and the center would in turn warn Rescue Party (In Kenya, and in Cameroon?) of beacon, ac reg. number and position. Not in this case?

imagine if the elt was from another plane, perhaps the winglet remark is prophetic.

just for imagination,

ELT Types
 

Quite a few ELT types as I understand it.
Automatic/Fixed
Automatic /Portable
Survival/Portable
Survival.
Personal

Most now give GPS position but the most basic don't. Those dedicated to a particular aircraft normally registered to it by serial No. so the aircraft is identified by it's ELT's serial No. In practice there have been issues. In my company in the early days of fitment it wasn't unknown to get a phone call to let us know that one had been activated in error but unable to identify which. This was suspected to be caused by water ingress. The ELTs (helicopter bait) were moved to a drier location.

Hope you never have to use yours!

See you on the ground.

ELT 406 are linked to the serial number of the aircraft. B737-800 should be equiped with ELT 406.

Winglet???? Most aircraft equiped with these are safe to fly with one winglet missing. Will even be in the MEL. Normally Cat A.

Apparently they do not report wx overnight, hence no 2300z METAR

Sounds like the crash site is over 200km from FKKD though so this wx is pretty much irrelevant now.

130.382 --
I think he was referring to the South American incident where an Embrarer's winglet snared a larger commercial jet and brought it down.

ELT(EPIRBs)Emergency Position Indicating Radio Beacons),

The COSPAS-SARSAT, is a joint international satellite search, and rescue system established in Canada, France, the former USSR, and the USA, to locate emergency radio beacons transmitting on 121.5Mhz, and 406Mhz(Within a given bandwidth). The US satellites in this system not only receive on 121.5, and 406, but on the aviation military frequency 243Mhz. By International regulation certain classes of passenger vessels, aircraft included must have them on-board, and functioning before leaving the port(Airport included). These give out a unique digitally encoded signal, which the satellites then use to triangulate location, which is fed automatically to international aviation, military, and marine search , and rescue stations for action. There are procedures for technicians to follow for false triggering, and so on. EPIRBs are built to stand the effects of weather, and catastrophic crashes, and must be able to transmit for a given period on batteries, certain EPIRBs can only be carried, and activated by a licensed radio technician, after justification, others are activated automatically based on certain conditions, and hence there are three classes A, B, and C.

A call to an US coast guard station, or other such facility on confirmation of a missing aircraft would have initiated an immediate response, after confirmation on the Russian side, and US side.

Mr. Andrew O. Ojwang(Nairobi)

A question for those in the military...
Would a magnetic anomaly detector, i.e. one of those things you hunt subs with on Nimrods, P3s S3s etc detect a large metal mass, like a 2 tonne jet engine in the jungle ?

You can find an earth surface anomaly using the same satellite techniques used to find oil, and mineral deposits, but some-one must have surveyed the area by satellite prior to this incident. The same technology is used by space probes to investigate the planets in our solar system.

Mr. Andrew O. Ojwang(Nairobi).