Passenger Jet crashes in Congo

An airliner plowed into dense forest as it tried to land during a rainstorm in the Democratic Republic of Congo on Friday, killing 127 people on board, the Congolese transport ministry said.  There were 51 survivors, a ministry statement said. The chief executive of the airline involved in the crash told Reuters earlier that there had been 110 people on board the plane, of whom 53 had died and 57 survived. But a spokesman for the transport ministry, Gudile Bualya, accused the airline of underestimating the number of passengers.

The accident at the international airport of Kisangani, a commercial center and river port town in the east, is the latest in a string of disasters in the vast central African country which has saddled it with one of the worst air safety records in the world. "The pilot tried to land but apparently they didn't touch the runway," Stavros Papaioannou, chief executive of Hewa Bora airline, told Reuters by telephone. Hewa Bora is on a European Union list of airlines banned due to security concerns, as are all carriers certified in Congo. It is the second fatal accident involving the airline in three years, after its DC-9 airliner plowed into a suburb of the eastern Congolese city of Goma, killing 44, in 2008.

Earlier, government spokesman Lambert Mende said rescue services had pulled 40 survivors from the Boeing 727. Jean-Paul Bongisa, a local reporter for Congolese state television at the scene of the crash, told Reuters the rescue was being hampered by difficulties in reaching the wreckage, some 200 meters (yards) from the runway in dense equatorial forest. Congo is roughly the same size as Western Europe but rail and road links through its jungles are few, so air and river travel are usually the only viable options for long distance journeys. In April, 32 people were killed when a U.N. plane crashed as it tried to land at the airport serving Congo's capital Kinshasa. The operator of the plane was Georgian flag carrier Airzena Georgian Airways. According to Hewa Bora's website, the airline has two Boeing 727s, both configured as passenger planes with 137 economy seats and 12 business class seats. They fly purely within Congo. Once the world's best-selling airliner, the Boeing 727 first flew in 1963 and was designed for short- and medium-haul routes. The last aircraft was delivered in 1984.

Yet another Tupolev crashes in Russia

A passenger jet crashed in heavy fog and burst into flames late Monday on a highway in north-western Russia, just short of a runway whose fog lights had failed, killing 44 people, officials said. Eight people survived the crash. The Tu-134 plane, belonging to the RusAir airline, was en route from Moscow to the city of Petrozavodsk, an Emergencies Ministry spokeswoman, Oksana Semyonova, told The Associated Press. Her ministry said in a website statement that 44 people were killed. Eight survivors, including a 10-year-old boy and a female flight attendant, were hospitalized in critical condition in Petrozavodsk.

Semyonova said the plane went down on its final approach to the airport in Petrozavodsk, making a crash landing one to two kilometres (about a mile) short of the runway, breaking apart and then bursting into flames. It was unclear if the plane had attempted to land on the road, or just happened to fall there, she said. Petrozavodsk is in Karelia province, near the Finnish border, about 400 miles (640 kilometres) northwest of Moscow. Authorities had no immediate explanation for the accident, but the Interfax news agency quoted the airport director Alexei Kuzmitsky as saying there were "unfavourable weather conditions." Compounding the pilot's troubles was the failure of the runway's high-intensity illumination, which is supposed to be deployed at times of low visibility, Alexei Morozov, deputy head of the Interstate Aviation Committee, told the ITAR-Tass news agency.

A RusAir representative who declined to give his name told The Associated Press that the plane was in good working order and that the weather conditions, although tricky, "weren't critical." The Tupolev 134, along with its larger sibling the Tu-154, has been the workhorse of Soviet and Russian civil aviation since the 1960s. The model that crashed was built in 1980, had a 68-person capacity and a range of about 2,000 kilometres (1,240 miles). Photographs on the ministry website showed fragments of metal strewn across a road as thick fog hung over woodland in the background. A landing gear jutting out from the ground was the only recognizable plane part. The plane was carrying 52 people, including nine crew members, Semyonova said. Russian news agencies said Russian Premier League soccer referee Vladimir Pettay and a Swedish citizen were among the victims.

The Karelia branch of the Emergencies Ministry said radio contact with the pilot was lost at 11:40 p.m. local time (7:30 p.m. EDT, 1940 GMT). The black box flight data recorders have been recovered, the news agencies said. The accident occurred on the eve of Prime Minister Vladimir Putin's planned appearance Tuesday at the Paris Air Show to support dozens of Russian firms seeking sales contracts. Russia and the other former Soviet republics have some of the world's worst air traffic safety records, according to the International Air Transport Association. Experts blame weak government controls, poor pilot training and a cost-cutting mentality for the poor safety record, leading to emergency landings being reported with alarming regularity. Polish President Lech Kaczynski was among 96 people killed when his Tu-154 crashed in heavy fog while trying to land near the western city of Smolensk in April 2010. In 2006, three crashes - two in Russia and one in Ukraine - killed more than 400 people.

Qantas to cut cost - cancels aircraft orders

Australia's Qantas Airways will cut spending by AUD$700 million (USD$750 million) and plans to cancel aircraft orders as it battles waning demand, high fuel costs and investor displeasure with its shares trading near multi-year lows. Qantas, which suffered a blow to its reputation after an Airbus A380 accident last year forced it to ground its flagship aircraft, said it will cut capital expenditure by AUD$400 million up to the end of fiscal 2012 and will reduce aircraft leasing costs by AUD$300 million. With its shares at two-year lows, pilots threatening strike action, costs rising and the domestic economy going through a rough patch, Qantas has been under pressure to take decisive action, with some analysts suggesting its credit rating could come under pressure.

The airline has already offered cabin crew voluntary redundancy in hopes of cutting 350 jobs and raised fares several times to combat its AUD$3.7 billion fuel bill. Qantas now expects its domestic capacity to grow by just 5.5 percent, below the 8 percent projected earlier and the airline will cancel or defer a fifth of its aircraft deliveries next year. Australia's economy contracted by the fastest rate in 20 years in the first quarter and recent data on retail spending and consumer sentiment indicates households are feeling more pain than earlier thought and were unlikely to sharply raise consumer spending. In addition, households have sharply raised their savings as they expect interest rates and mortgage costs, to go even higher.

Air France A330 crash report

The Air France airliner that crashed into the Atlantic in 2009 was out of control for four minutes, investigators said, in a report raising questions about how crew handled a "stall alarm" blaring out in the cabin. Information gleaned from black boxes, and recovered almost two years after the disaster killed 228 people, confirmed that speed-readings in the Airbus cockpit had gone haywire, believed to be linked to the icing of speed sensors outside the jet. As Air France pilots fought for control, the doomed A330 dropped 38,000 feet, rolling left to right, its engines flat out but its wings unable to grab enough air to keep flying.

The plane crashed on June 1, 2009, en route from Rio de Janeiro to Paris. Black boxes stopped recording at 0214 GMT. France's BEA crash investigation agency said in a detailed chronology of the crash that commands from the controls of the 32-year-old junior pilot on board had pulled the nose up as the aircraft became unstable and generated an audible stall warning. Aviation industry sources told reporters that this action went against the normal procedures which call for the nose to be lowered in response to an alert that the plane was about to stall.

This type of aerodynamic stall is nothing to do with a stall in the engines, both of which kept working as crew requested. "A stall is the moment at which a plane stops flying and starts falling," said David Learmount, operations and safety editor at the British aviation publication Flight International. An aircraft industry safety consultant said the standard guidance in the Airbus pilot manual called in this event for the pilot to lower the nose by pushing the control stick forward.

"The BEA is now going to have to analyze and get to bottom of how crew handled this event," said Paul Hayes, safety director at Ascend Aviation, a UK-based aviation consultancy. "The big question in my mind is why did the pilot flying (the aircraft) appear to continue to pull the nose up," he said. French investigators said the emergency began with the autopilot disengaging itself two and a half hours into the flight and the junior pilot, who had been in control at take-off, picked up manually and saying "I have control".

The autopilot appears to have responded to a loss of reliable airspeed information. This was accompanied moments later by the disembodied voice of a recorded "stall" alert. It is what happened next that is likely to fuel most theories on what preceded the crash, but Air France and its main pilots union insisted faulty speed probes were the root cause. In a passage likely to attract particular scrutiny, the BEA said the pilot "maintained" the nose-up command despite fresh stall warnings 46 seconds into the four-minute emergency.

"The inputs made by the pilot flying were mainly nose-up," the report added. The Airbus jet climbed 3,000 feet to 38,000 feet despite the crew having decided earlier against a climb, and then began a dramatic descent, with the youngest pilot handing control to the second most senior pilot a minute before impact. The captain returned after "several attempts" to call him back to the cockpit but was not at the controls in the final moments, according to information gleaned from black boxes.

By the time the 58-year-old returned, just over a minute into the emergency, the aircraft was in serious trouble: plunging at 10,000 feet a minute with its nose pointing up 15 degrees and at too high an angle to the air to recapture lift. The BEA did not provide extracts of the transcript for the last minute before the jet hit the water with its nose up. It promised a fuller interim report which could say more about the causes of the crash in July.

Data recovered from the Air France A330 FDR

Investigators trying to determine why an Air France plane crashed mysteriously two years ago have recovered the complete contents of the flight data recorder and the last two hours of cockpit conversation, they announced Monday.It will take several weeks to analyze the data, French air accident experts said.All 228 people aboard Air France 447 were killed when the Airbus A330 belly-flopped into the ocean June 1, 2009, in stormy weather. The cause of the crash is still not known.

Discovering that there was data on the recorders "is excellent news. It is really going to help us work out what happened on that plane," said Martine Del Bono, spokeswoman for France's Bureau of Investigation and Analysis (BEA). The cockpit voice recorder and flight data recorder were found at the beginning of May after an unprecedented series of submarine searches of a mountain range 3,900 meters (12,700 feet) under the ocean. They were brought to the surface and taken to Paris by ship and plane.

The investigators also recovered two bodies from the fuselage -- after finding only about 50 bodies in the days immediately after the crash.

They will not bring more bodies up from the ocean if they cannot identify the two they already have, they said Thursday. Those two bodies are being examined to see if there is enough DNA to identify them, investigators said, adding that they hope to have results by Wednesday. If they can identify the remains, they will consider bringing up other bodies from the wreckage. The bulk of the plane was located earlier this year and contains many more human remains, according to investigators.

Recovering more bodies will be a difficult task, with miles of cable required to bring each one up over a period of three hours, they said. Investigators also brought an engine and an avionics bay containing computers to the surface, they said. The pilots of Air France 447 lost contact with air traffic controllers on June 1, 2009, while flying across an area of the Atlantic known for severe turbulence, officials said. But exactly what caused the plane to plunge into the ocean remains a mystery.

The plane slammed into the water while en route from Rio de Janeiro, Brazil, to Paris, falling so fast that air masks did not have time to deploy. The fuselage was discovered in April with bodies still inside, investigators said.Some relatives of those who died have expressed reservations about remains being brought to the surface.

Last month Robert Soulas, head of a support group for families of flight victims, said: "For me, personally I would like to leave the bodies of my children, my two children, on the seabed." Other relatives have called for the bodies to be recovered.

Air France crash - black box located.

Investigators have located and recovered the memory unit of the flight data recorder of a 2009 Air France flight - a remarkable deep-sea discovery they hope will explain why the aircraft went down in a remote area of the mid-Atlantic, killing all 228 people on board. France's air accident investigation agency BEA said a search by a submarine probing some 3,900 meters (12,800 feet) below the ocean's surface located and recovered the unit Sunday morning. The unit is now aboard the ship Ile de Sein, the statement said.

The statement also included photos of the recorder - a red cylinder partially buried in sand on the sea floor. Judging from the photos, the unit appeared to be in good condition. Last month, the agency said the undersea search had identified the "chassis" that had held the recorder, but said the memory unit was still missing. The flight data recorder stores data from the flight. Another so-called "black box" records cockpit conversations.

Investigators hope Sunday's remarkable discovery will allow them to determine what caused the June 1, 2009 crash of Flight 447 from Rio de Janeiro, Brazil, to the French capital, Paris. The aircraft slammed into the Atlantic northeast of Brazil after running into an intense high-altitude thunderstorm. Automatic messages sent by the Airbus 330's computers showed it was receiving false air speed readings from sensors known as pitot tubes. Investigators have said the crash was likely caused by a series of problems, and not just sensor error.

The crash site was so remote and in such a deep area of the Atlantic that the bulk of the wreckage was only recently discovered, thanks to a deep-sea search. Experts have said that without retrieving the voice and data recorders there would be almost no chance of determining what caused the crash - the worst disaster in Air France's history.

Iran Air crashes killing 71 of 106 onboard

An IranAir passenger jet carrying 106 people crashed as it was making an emergency landing during a snowstorm on Sunday in the country's northwest and broke into several pieces, killing 71 of those on board, Iranian media reported.The others survived with slight injuries.

The pilots of the Boeing-727, operated by Iran's national airline, attempted the emergency landing in the city of Orumiyeh, 460 miles (700 kilometres) northwest of the capital, Tehran, after reporting a technical failure to the control tower, the semiofficial Mehr news agency reported, quoting a deputy provincial governor, Ebrahim Fatholahi. The nature of the technical failure was unclear. A spokesman for the Iranian civil aviation organisation, Abbas Mosayebi, said only that the plane "faced an incident," state TV reported. The network also said the aircraft disappeared from radar and went down in farmland after making a second attempt to land. The aircraft was heading from Tehran to Orumiyeh, capital of West Azerbaijan province. State TV aired footage showing rescue workers and local farmers searching for survivors on Sunday night in parts of the wrecked plane, under snowfall and in the darkness.
Thirty-five people survived, including two crew members, said Javad Mahmoudi, deputy governor of West Azerbaijan, speaking to State TV. He put the number of confirmed dead at 71. Some of the passengers were only lightly wounded and able to walk off the plane, but some had to be taken to hospital, Mosayebi said. Heavy snow complicated rescue efforts, said the head of the State Emergency Centre, Gholam Reza Masoumi, according to the semi-official Fars news agency. The report also said there was fog in the area. The plane broke into several pieces, but there was no explosion or fire, said Mahmoud Mozaffar, head of the rescue department of  Iran's Red Crescent Society, speaking on state TV.

Iran has a history of frequent air accidents blamed on its ageing aircraft and poor maintenance. IranAir's fleet includes Boeing and Airbus aircraft, many of them bought before the country's 1979 Islamic Revolution. Iranian airlines, including those run by the state, are chronically strapped for cash, and maintenance has suffered, experts say. U.S. sanctions prevent Iran from updating its 30-year-old American aircraft and make it difficult to get European spare parts or planes as well. The country has come to rely on Russian aircraft, many of them Soviet-era planes that are harder to get parts for since the Soviet Union's fall.

Passenger Jet crashes in Pakistan

Reports suggest that none of the nearly 152 people on board have survived this morning's plane crash in Islamabad.  This is Pakistan's worst-ever plane crash.  The passenger plane, an Airbus A321, operated by private airline AirBlue,with 146 passengers and 6 crew was headed from Karachi to Islamabad.  It went up in a haze of flames and white smoke close to 10 am in the heavily-forested Margalla Hills overlooking Islamabad. It was raining heavily in the region this morning and that, along with thick fog and the smoke from the crash made it tough for rescue helicopters to reach the crash site.  Rescue officials had to trek for close to an hour to reach the area. Through the day, Pakistani media carried conflicting reports on survivors, with some reporting that 45 people were alive.  Rescue officials reported that the plane's debris was spread over a huge area, and that dead bodies- charred beyond recognition -were strewn around the forest.

Lufthansa cargo plane crashes in Saudi airport

A Lufthansa MD11 cargo plane crashed at the Saudi capital's international airport on Tuesday but there were no casualties, the airline and the kingdom's civil aviation authority said. Two crew members were taken to hospital to undergo treatment for minor injuries. The firefighters have contained the fire, a spokesman for the General Authority of Civil Aviation reported. The two pilots exited the plane using emergency escape slides. There were no other crew members on board the aircraft. The MD-11 freighter carrying an 80-tonne load crashed at 1138 local time as it was arriving in Riyadh, Lufthansa Cargo said. The aircraft, which has been heavily damaged, was on its way from Frankfurt to Hong Kong via Riyadh and Sharjah. Europe's biggest cargo carrier said it was sending a team of experts to Riyadh to help investigate the cause of the crash. An airport official told Reuters the plane veered off the runway on landing: "It did not stop until the Royal Terminal runway. Soon after smoke started to emerge, followed by a fire". A local television channel earlier reported the cargo plane had split in half.

DGCA probes for an investigation for the accident at IGI International airport Delhi

The Directorate General of Civil Aviation (DGCA) and the Air India management have instituted independent inquiries into the freak accident at the Indira Gandhi International Airport, where the nose wheel of an aircraft ran over and crushed the right foot and left thigh bone of a senior technician, on Sunday night. Raj Kishore (45) was operated on on Monday morning and is reportedly out of danger. The Delhi Police is also investigating the matter and has registered a case. Kishore’s statement to the police and independent versions of various airport officials, however, point to a communication gap between the pilot and technician that reportedly caused the accident.  In his statement, Kishore, who has over 20 years of experience, said the incident was an accident because of a communication gap. According to airline officials, the technician guides the pilot on movement on the ground. “It looks like a communication error between the pilot and the technician. At the time of pushback, Kishore fell and the front wheel of the aircraft ran over his leg,” an Air India spokesperson was reported saying this to media.

Kin's of the victim of Mangalore crash get legal help from US man

He is not a lawyer, not even an air crash investigator and he makes no claims to being an insurance expert. But world over, grief stricken families of air crash victims from the remotest corners of an Amazonian village to a Russian town know him by name, and share with him a "tremendous rapport", as he himself puts it and sometimes, even lunch.

He is George Hatcher, a self-described air crash consultant and adviser who helps families take on colossal aircraft companies or airlines in US courts for damages after the loss of a dear one in a crash. Many families have won millions of dollars in settlements, he says and for many, the battle is still on. Hatcher, at 67, made his first ever trip to India last weekend and headed straight to the May 22 Air India crash site in Mangalore. He met families of the victims, spoke to young widows of Gulf-based Indian workmen even as their tiny tots played in the same room and convinced at least 10 of them that they deserved more than the mandatory compensation the airline was bound, under an international treaty, to give them. With him was Nishit Dhruva, partner of a Mumbai-based law firm M Dhruva & Partners who has joined hands with three large US law firms and setting the stage to sue Boeing, the American aircraft maker, in US courts for the biggest Indian air crash in decades.

Hatcher told, "You are a fare paying passenger. You need to be paid a compensation after any crash. The question is how much." That's where he comes in."I am just a bridge between lawyers and the clients," he said. But he doesn't knock on victims' doors unless he is sought. It is law firms that seek his help. In the US, law forbids law firms from chasing victims for the first 45 days after a tragedy.In India, now, Hatcher says he feels the families of the 170-odd victims, many of whom are poor, deserve to be placed on an equal footing to seek better damages.In India, though, he said Air India had a good flight record, experts in the field are pointing fingers at "a pilot error". But some, he added, "suggest turbine problems". With it being a US plane, what is being looked at is "multiple culpability" as this is the third 737 800 going down in recent times.As Hatcher says, "It is not enough to pay out one pay cheque, clear the wreckage, submit a report and say that we are even. Assess each victim based on parameters, including age, education, job, income, number of dependents, pain and suffering."

Transcripts from the Polish plane crash that killed the Polish President

Partial transcripts of the CVR, the communications between the pilots and ATC was released on Tuesday.

10:11:01 SECOND PILOT: No, one can see the ground...Something is visible...Maybe there’ll be no tragedy.
10:17:40: PILOT: It’s not good, the fog has descended. One doesn’t know if we will land there.
FLIGHT ATTENDANT: Really?
UNIDENTIFIED: And if we don’t, then what?
PILOT: We will re-ascend.
10:23:59 AIR CONTROL: What other airport options do you have?
PILOT: Vitebsk, Minsk (in Belarus)
10:25:01 PILOT: Thank you, if it’s fine, we will try landing, but if weather conditions are bad we will re-ascend to make a second circle.
10:25:12 AIR CONTROL: If you try to land, will you have enough fuel to (get to) the backup (airport)?
PILOT: We will have enough.
10:26:05 SECOND PILOT: Well, they (*) succeeded. They also say there is fog...
PILOT: Director (**), there is fog... Right now, in these (weather) conditions, we will not be able to land. We will try to land, will make one attempt, but probably nothing will come out of it. If it occurs (unintelligible) what do we do? We don’t have enough fuel to... (unintelligible).
KAZANA: Well then we have a problem.
PILOT: We can stay up for 30 minutes and then go to the backup (airport).
10:29:40 1st POLISH PLANE: The Il (***) was trying to land twice and I think they flew somewhere else.
SECOND PILOT: Ok, I get it, thanks. Did you hear?
PILOT: Nice.
10:30:32 MARIUSZ KAZANA: So far there is no decision from the president on what to do next.
10:32:55 PILOT: We are attempting to land. If we fail to land, we are re-ascending on autopilot.
10:35:22 AIR CONTROL: From 100 metres be ready to re-ascend for a second loop.
PILOT: Roger.
10:38:00 UNIDENTIFIED: (S)he will be annoyed if... (Unintelligible)
10:40:06 WARNING SYSTEM: TERRAIN AHEAD, TERRAIN AHEAD
10:40:32 WARNING SYSTEM: TERRAIN AHEAD, TERRAIN AHEAD
10:40:39 WARNING SYSTEM: TERRAIN AHEAD, TERRAIN AHEAD (100 metres)
10:40:42 WARNING SYSTEM: PULL UP, PULL UP

10:40:44 WARNING SYSTEM: PULL UP, PULL UP
10:40:46 WARNING SYSTEM: TERRAIN AHEAD, TERRAIN AHEAD (100 metres)
10:40:49 SECOND PILOT: As normal (90 metres)
WARNING SYSTEM: PULL UP, PULL UP (80 metres)
10:40:50 SECOND PILOT: We are re-ascending
10:41:51 WARNING SYSTEM: PULL UP, PULL UP
(60 metres)
(50 metres)
10:40:52 (air control urges pilots to halt descent)
(40 metres)
10:40:53 WARNING SYSTEM: PULL UP, PULL UP
(30 metres)
10:40:54 (air control urges pilots to halt descent)
(20 metres)
10:40:56 WARNING SYSTEM: PULL UP, PULL UP
10:40:58 WARNING SYSTEM: PULL UP, PULL UP
10:40:59 (sound of hitting a tree)
10:41:00 SECOND PILOT: Fuck!
WARNING SYSTEM: PULL UP, PULL UP
10:41:02 AIR CONTROL: Re-ascend for second circle
UNIDENTIFIED: (shout) Fuuuuuuck.
10:41:05 (transcript ends)
NOTES:
* Refers to a plane carrying Polish journalists which had landed safely in Smolensk earlier that morning ahead of Kaczynski’s plane.
** Refers to Mariusz Kazana, head of Poland’s diplomatic protocol.
*** Refers to a Russian plane which tried to land in Smolensk after the first Polish plane but failed due to thick fog. It flew to a different airport.

Source : The Montreal Gazette

Exapt pilot's medical reqirments in India - a cause of worry

The crash of the Air India Express flight IX 812 at Mangalore International airport has brought the DGCA's medical requirement for expat pilots in the country is under the scanner. It seems like the Indian pilots are put under a very strict medical requirement to fly for airliners, on the other hand DGCA does not force the expat pilots to prove the medical fitness at the same standards as the Indian pilots are asked to do.
There have been few incidents involving expat pilots which is scary. There was a French national who was flying with Jet Airways and had collapsed at his hotel room just after his duty, in another terrifying case a first officer had to take control of the flight as the expat captain had become unconscious all in a sudden, lucky that the first officer was quick to act and he had landed the aircraft safely.
In another incident involving a South African pilot were he was arrested by the cops at Dubai, his wife had claimed that the pilot was suffering from hyper tension and diabetes which pose a high risk for pilots.
Was it something like this that caused the fatal Mangalore crash? Is DGCA gonna be sticking with the same relaxed requirement for expat pilots? Will there be another crash same as the Mangalore, if the captain's health had played a vital role in this crash. Will these questions be answered by the DGCA?

Crew highly experienced on flight 812 - AI chief

What went wrong with the Air India Express flight IX 812 is still a mystery as the DGCA has started probing into the accident. Expertise from Boeing and the NTSB  has been sought to help the investigation. There have been rumors that the pilots did have enough training to fly into the tricky runway of Mangalore. The Air India chief had called for press meeting earlier this evening and had clarified that those were just rumors.
He claimed that the Cockpit crew had enough rest as per the DGCA regulations and he had proof for the same. He also dismissed that the pilots did not have enough training, he said that the Captain had flown in and out of Mangalore several times and infact he had completed 19 successful landings at the same runway and the first officer had made 66 landings in the same runway. The crew was highly experienced, the Captain had more than 10,000 flying hours under his belt and the first officer had more than 3,000 hours of flying experience.

He refused to comment on the speculation that the aircraft might have touched down way beyond the touch down zone which made it hard for the crew to stop it within the available runway. He has asked the media "not to speculate any such thing as the investigation team is probing into the accident and lets wait patiently for them to come up with the cause of accident." The Flight Data Recorder (FDR) and the Cockpit Voice Recorder (CVR) will play a vital role in finding the cause for the fatal crash killing more than 150 with just 7 survivors, as the FDR can give important information on what the aircraft systems were doing during the final seconds and the CVR could explain what the crew was going through before the tragedy. This could explain was it a human error or a mechanical/electrical or any sort of catastrophic failure that had caused the crash.  

Passenger plane crashes in Afghanistan

A passenger plane carrying 44 passengers which include 6 foreign nationals has crashed in Afghanistan. Officials reported that it was a domestic flight and it had crashed in the Salang pass. There has been no official word on the casualties of the crash. It was reported that the aircraft was operated by Pamir Airways a private airlines in Afghanistan which had started its operation in 1995, since then it has been operating many domestic flight and flights to Dubai and Saudi Arabia for the Hajj pilgrims as well. The immediate cause of the accident is still unknown but aviation experts in Afghanistan suspect poor weather could have been the cause for the disaster. The crash site is 12,400 feet the Salang pass, it is expected that the search and rescue could have problems in reaching debris of the crashed aircraft.

No traces of fire before the crash - Tripoli crash

The plane that crashed on landing in Tripoli did not catch any fire or there wasn't any sort of explosion before the it crashed, reports suggest. The A330 with more than 100 people on board, killing all and leaving a sole survivor a nine year old Dutch boy who lost his family in the crash.
The reports also suggest that the pilot did not report any sorts of trouble to the air traffic controller. The black box and the flight data recorder are expected to be sent to Europe or USA for decoding the data and the conversation that happened during the final seconds of the fatal crash.

Aircraft crashes minutes before landing killing more than 100 on board

An Airbus A330 bound to Tripoli from Johannesburg has crashed just minutes before making it to the runway. The cause of the crash is yet to be determined, but there have been reports that suggest that there could have been an explosion just before the aircraft crashed. The aircraft was owned by Afriqiyah Airways, most of the passengers on board were Dutch people who were flying to other European countries connecting from this flight.
It was reported that the rescue team had rescued one 8 year old boy alive. The rescue team are are still doing their best to find few more alive. It is also believed that the Airbus officials have rushed a team to the crash site to find out what could have gone wrong.

Hunt for the crashed Air France jet extended

The French investigators on Tuesday said that the under water hunt for the wreckage of the crashed jet, an A330 killing all 228 people on board has been extended through late May. But the hunt will resume with fewer resources, the French accident investigation agency BEA is still confident enough to zero in on the location of the crash site. The BEA also confirmed that only one of the previous two ships will hunt for the black box as one vessel is carrying US Navy owned equipment and is unavailable. Air France and Air Bus the manufacturer of jet will sponsor euro 1.5 million each for the search operation that will carry on until May 25th.

Pilot error cause for the 2007 Cameroon crash

Investigators have found the probable cause for the May 2007 crash of a Kenyan Airways B737 in Cameroon. The aircraft with 114 passengers on board crashed on a stormy night just after take off from Douala en route to Nairobi. The investigation team has ruled that the aircraft crashed due to loss of control of the crew due to spatial orientation. The report said that the after a long slow roll during which no instrument scanning was done by the crew and with no external visual reference in a dark night the aircraft crashed. The report said that the crew had failed to notice that the aircraft was banking slowly to the right as it gained altitude and just as the alarm sounded to warn the crew the Captain grabbed the controls and made erratic movements of the control column, putting the aircraft into a steeper bank of more than 90 degrees. The CVR had the final moments of the cockpit in which the first officer was calling 'left left captain' as it just hit the ground. 

Hot air ballon crash kills two

A hot air balloon carrying 14 people crashed in Abu Dhabi on Sunday killing two. Two others were injured and one seriously injured. Among the two killed one was a French and other was an Indian citizen. The civil aviation ministry has probed an investigation into the crash and hasn't revealed the identity of the people who were killed.
The crash happened over a desert.