Ethiopian Airlines Flight 961

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Ethiopian Airlines Flight 961
Boeing 767-260-ER, Ethiopian Airlines AN0268917.jpg

The unlucky machine in 1993
Accident summary
Accident type Ditching after lack of fuel during an aircraft hijacking
place Le Galawa Beach, near Moroni , Comoros
date November 23, 1996
Fatalities 125, including the three kidnappers
Survivors 50
Injured 44
Aircraft
Aircraft type Boeing 767-200ER
operator Ethiopian Airlines
Mark ET-AIZ
Passengers 163
crew 12
Lists of aviation accidents
Seating plan

On 23 November 1996 a Boeing 767-200ER on the Ethiopian Airlines Flight 961 hijacked and had to due to lack of fuel off the coast of the Comoros in the Indian Ocean ditch . The machine was supposed to make a scheduled flight from Addis Ababa ( Ethiopia ) to Abidjan ( Ivory Coast ). Before the planned stopover in Nairobi ( Kenya ), hijackers had taken control of the plane. They asked to be flown to Australia, even though the machine only had a fraction of the fuel it needed on board. 125 of the 175 inmates were killed in the ditching.

kidnapping

When the Ethiopian Airlines Boeing 767 flew into Kenyan airspace that day after a flight time of around 20 minutes, three men of Ethiopian origin stormed the cockpit and took control of the machine. The men were described as young (around 24-25 years old), inexperienced, mentally unstable and drunk and were armed with a fire extinguisher and a small fire ax. They threatened to detonate a bomb and said over the intercom of the plane that they were opponents of the Ethiopian government, were seeking asylum and had recently been released from prison. Authorities later determined that the alleged bomb was a covered liquor bottle . After 15 minutes, the co-pilot Yonas Merkuria was beaten and locked out of the cockpit. For the remainder of the kidnapping, two of the men stayed in the cockpit while one of them positioned himself in front of it.

The kidnappers asked to fly the machine to Australia. The plane only had fuel for a quarter of this distance. The flight captain Leul Abate (at the time of the hijacking he was 42 years old and had already been hijacked two times) tried to explain this to the hijackers, but they did not believe him. Instead of steering the machine in the direction of Australia, the captain continued to fly along the African coast, as ditching in the open sea drastically reduces the chances of survival. After some time, after realizing that land was still in sight, the kidnappers forced the captain to change course to the east. The captain then turned away. He headed for the Comoros , located between Madagascar and mainland Africa , without informing the kidnappers.

Ditching

When the aircraft reached the archipelago, there was little kerosene left, so the captain decided to fly loops first to keep the possibility of landing at Moroni airport open. After three and a half hours of flight time, the right engine failed. The captain informed the passengers about the lack of fuel and the failure of the first engine. He also instructed to prepare for an emergency landing and put on the life jackets, but not to inflate them yet.

Shortly thereafter, the left engine also failed and the aircraft went into gliding flight. A ram-air turbine was automatically activated to power the aircraft's most important functions. In order to keep the machine under control even without power amplification systems, the co-pilot returned to his post.

A fight with the kidnappers resulted in the captain becoming disoriented and unable to make out the airport. Instead, he put the machine 500 m from the Le Galawa Beach , near the capital, Moroni , on the sea on. The failure of the hydraulically controlled landing flaps increased the landing speed from 240–290 km / h to 370 km / h. In addition, the aircraft tilted so that the left wing touched the water and was torn off. Due to the lift of the remaining right wing, a rotational force acted on the aircraft, which caused the fuselage to break into three parts. Local residents, tourists and a group of divers and French doctors rushed over to provide first aid to the survivors .

125 of the 175 people on board, including the three hijackers, died as a result of the impact, the breakup and the subsequent rapid sinking of the aircraft. The captain of the flight, Leul Abate, and his co-pilot Yonas Merkuria were able to free themselves from the wreck by swimming. Many victims died because they had their life jackets inflated before the impact and could not leave the sinking machine.

Trivia

  • Flight ET961 is probably one of the most famous aircraft hijackings as a tourist couple that ditching filming.
  • Two of the survivors wrote a book about their experiences during and after the abduction and ditching.
  • Both Captain Abate and his co-pilot received aviation awards - Abate received the “Professionalism Award of Flight Safety” from the Flight Safety Foundation, the “Conway Safe Skies Award” and the “International Flight Safety Award” . Both then continued to fly for Ethiopian Airlines .

Web links

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ Special Report: Ethiopian Airlines Flight 961 at Airdisaster.com (engl.) ( Memento of 23 September 2012 Webcite 27), call in December 2018
  2. ↑ Tourist video of the crash of Ethiopian Airlines Flight 961
  3. ↑ Kidnapped! Flight in the catastrophe , Reader's Digest, Verlag Das Beste 2001; engl. Original title: Hijack! Our Story of Survival , Lizzie Anders et al. Katie Hayes, 1998. ISBN 0-233-99338-X

Coordinates: 11 ° 22 ′ 0 ″  S , 43 ° 18 ′ 0 ″  E