Air Algérie flight 5017

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Air Algérie flight 5017
McDonnell Douglas MD-83 Swiftair EC-LTV (8415403452) .jpg

The plane at Madrid-Barajas Airport in 2013
Accident summary
Accident type presumably stall in cruise
place about 80 km southeast of Gossi , 160 km southwest of Gao , MaliMaliMali 
date July 24, 2014
Fatalities 116
Survivors 0
Aircraft
Aircraft type McDonnell Douglas MD-83
operator Air Algérie
Mark EC-LTV
Departure airport Ouagadougou Airport , Burkina FasoBurkina FasoBurkina Faso 
Destination airport Algiers Airport , AlgeriaAlgeriaAlgeria 
Passengers 110
crew 6th
Lists of aviation accidents

Coordinates: 15 ° 8 ′ 4 ″  N , 1 ° 4 ′ 0 ″  W Air Algérie flight 5017 ( flight number : AH5017) was a scheduled flight from Ouagadougou to Algiers , on Air Algérie on July 24, 2014 one of the Spanish Swiftair rented a McDonnell Douglas MD-83 . According to the plan, the plane was supposed toland in Algiersat 05:40 UTC , but it crashed on Malian territory. All 116 occupants (6 crew members and 110 passengers) were killed in the accident.

Flight history

The MD-83 took off at 01:15 local time ( UTC ) from Ouagadougou Airport , where, according to METAR , thunderstorms had already been predicted. According to the French weather service, there was also a severe weather warning for parts of the route. At 01:39 UTC, the crew changed after consultation with the air traffic control the course of the aircraft to an intertropical convergence zone ( storm position ) west dodge.

At 1:44 am there was a final radio contact between AH 5017 and a Royal Air Maroc jet , in which the crew of the aircraft that had crashed shortly afterwards reported that they were immediately avoiding a danger at flight level 310 (at an altitude of 31,000 feet ) ("avoidance maneuver." ") . A short time later a request from the District Control Office (ACC) Niamey , Niger , to AH 5017 remained unanswered.

After a few rapid changes in the thrust of the jet engines , the roll around the longitudinal axis and a four-second skip of the autothrottle , which were recorded by the flight data recorder later recovered from the accident site from 1:44 a.m. , the aircraft came to a speed of 203 at 01:45:06 a.m. Knots in a descent, the engines came to idle , at 01:45:35 hrs it was at a speed of 162 knots 1150 feet below the flight level. As a result, the inclinations around the longitudinal and transverse axes developed dramatically and reached values ​​of up to 80 ° downwards and 140 ° to the left before the impact on the ground. About 20 seconds before the impact on the ground, the engine power increased again and reached almost maximum power. The plane hit the ground at high speed and with active engines .

According to an eyewitness report, the crash site was discovered by the crew of a helicopter from Burkina Faso on Malian territory around thirty kilometers north of the Burkinabe border on the evening of July 24th . The impact of the aircraft had created a crater about 35 meters long, 11 meters wide and 1 meter deep; the wreckage was distributed in an easterly direction up to about 420 meters away. The location is in the Gourma-Rharous district in the Timbuktu region , 80 km southeast of the city of Gossi on the lake of the same name and 160 km southwest of the city of Gao .

weather condition

Meteorologically, there is an intertropical front over Africa from May to October due to the clash of dry air masses over the Sahara and humid air masses coming from the Atlantic . As a result, powerful cumulonimbus (thunderclouds) formations and heavy monsoon rains develop over several degrees of longitude and latitude and up to an altitude of more than 15,000 meters , often combined with very violent gusts . Such an intra-tropical front was over northern Mali on the night of July 23rd to 24th, 2014.

The aircraft was equipped with an Airborne weather radar of the make Collins equipped.

plane

The aircraft was a McDonnell Douglas MD-83 with the aircraft registration EC-LTV and the serial number 53190. At the time of the accident, it was owned by the Spanish Balcargo SL, based in Madrid . The operator has been the Spanish Swiftair since October 25, 2012 and has been chartered by Air Algérie on wet lease (ACMI) including its crew since January 20, 2014 .

The machine was equipped with two Pratt & Whitney JT8D-219 engines and made its first flight in 1996, making it 18 years old at the time of the crash. The aircraft was first delivered to Heliopolis Airlines , flew there until December 1997 and was returned to the leasing company. Other lessees were the airlines Avianca and Air Austral . It was finally acquired by Swiftair on October 24, 2012.

According to the Director General of the French Civil Aviation Authority , the plane was examined a few days before the accident at Marseille Airport and was in good condition.

Salvage

In view of the armed conflict in northern Mali , the three-day investigation of the plane accident site at a height of 270 m had to be secured by French armed forces .

Crew and passengers

According to information from Swiftair, which operated the wet lease flight , there were 110 passengers on board in addition to six Spanish crew members. Some passengers had dual citizenship .

nationality number
FranceFrance France 52
Burkina FasoBurkina Faso Burkina Faso 28
AlgeriaAlgeria Algeria 6th
LebanonLebanon Lebanon 6th
SpainSpain Spain 6 1
CanadaCanada Canada 5
GermanyGermany Germany 4th
LuxembourgLuxembourg Luxembourg 2
EgyptEgypt Egypt 1
BelgiumBelgium Belgium 1
CameroonCameroon Cameroon 1
MaliMali Mali 1
NigeriaNigeria Nigeria 1
SwitzerlandSwitzerland Switzerland 1
United KingdomUnited Kingdom United Kingdom 1
1 Crew members

Many victims worked for various aid organizations . Among other things, the cabinet employee Wilfred Somda, who most recently worked for the Burkinabe Appui Conseil International pour le Développement (ACID-SA) based in LaSalle, Ontario , was in the machine . The victims of the aid organizations are u. a. around the pharmacist and President of the Syndicat des Pharmaciens de la Creuse Bertrand Gineste, and André Joly, who traveled with the German surgeon Jutta Zoller. Both founded in 1989, the Relief Association Oxygène in Remiremont , which include, inter alia orphans in Burkina Faso attended. Another passenger was the Malian filmmaker and screenwriter Bakary Diallo , who is based in France , who returned from Bobo-Dioulasso with his Cameroonian co-director Lorenzo Mbiahou .

Determination of the cause of the crash

The investigations are being carried out by the Malian authorities in cooperation with the French aircraft accident investigation authority BEA . On August 7, 2014, the first results of the flight recorder evaluations were announced. An approximate trajectory could be calculated from the secured data, which shows that the aircraft rapidly lost speed before the crash and tilted to the left at 160 knots (about 300 km / h). This was followed by a helical dive and the aircraft hit the ground about 60 seconds later at a speed of 380 knots (about 700 km / h).

On April 2, 2015, the BEA announced in a press release that the pilots had forgotten to start defrosting the pressure sensors on the engine cones (" nose cone pressure sensors "). These sensors transmit data to the automatic throttle control ( auto throttle system ). About two minutes after the aircraft had reached its cruising altitude of around 9,500 meters (31,000 feet ), the right engine sensor began to provide incorrect data to the autopilot , and the left engine sensor malfunctioned 55 seconds later. Due to the erroneous data, the auto-throttle system slowly reduced the engine power over a period of 5 minutes and 35 seconds, so that the airspeed fell from 290 to 200 knots . By the loss of speed, the increased angle of attack of the aircraft continuously, resulting in a stall led (stable). When the pilot 20 seconds after entering the stable deactivated the autopilot rolled the machine to the left in an inverted attitude , and finally reached a roll angle ( bank angle ) of 140 degrees. At the same time, the machine tilted 80 degrees over the transverse axis ( pitch ) and went into an almost vertical dive, which was maintained until the impact.

Similar events

Web links

Commons : Air-Algérie-Flight 5017  - Collection of images, videos and audio files

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ a b c d e Aircraft accident data and report in the Aviation Safety Network (English)
  2. ↑ Patrick Markey: Last contact with Air Algerie jet was over Mali: Algerian official. In: Reuters.com. July 24, 2014, accessed July 24, 2014 .
  3. ↑ Vol africain AH5017: un crash causé par les orages? La Chaîne Météo, July 24, 2014, accessed July 24, 2014 (French).
  4. ↑ http://abcnews.go.com/m/story?id=24691820&sid=76
  5. ↑ http://www.tagesschau.de/ausland/air-algerie-112.html ( Memento from July 24, 2014 in the Internet Archive )
  6. ↑ http://af.reuters.com/article/worldNews/idAFKBN0FT0YC20140725
  7. ↑ http://www.bbc.com/news/world-africa-28475335
  8. ↑ Air crash in Mali: France sends soldiers to the crash site. Spiegel Online , July 25, 2014, accessed July 25, 2014 .
  9. ↑ Interim Report. (PDF) Accident on 24 July 2014 in the region of Gossi in Mali to the MD-83 registered EC-LTV operated by Swiftair SA COMMISSION D'ENQUETE SUR LES ACCIDENTS ET INCIDENTS D'AVIATION CIVILE, REPUBLIQUE DU MALI, 20 September 2014 , accessed on November 13, 2014 .
  10. ↑ The aircraft in the aircraft database airframes.org
  11. ↑ The plane on planespotters.net
  12. ↑ Flight AH5017: Rescue teams find Air Algérie wreck in Mali. In: Zeit Online. July 25, 2014. Retrieved July 25, 2014 .
  13. ↑ Swiftair press release ( Memento of the original dated August 19, 2014 in the Internet Archive ) Info: The archive link was inserted automatically and has not yet been checked. Please check the original and archive link according to the instructions and then remove this notice. (PDF) @1@ 2Template: Webachiv / IABot / www.swiftair.com
  14. ↑ Associated Press: French official: Air Algerie flight that disppeared from radar crashed in Mali. In: Fox News. July 24, 2014, accessed July 24, 2014 .
  15. ↑ Press release by Air Algerie ( Memento from July 28, 2014 in the Internet Archive )
  16. ↑ Epoch Times, Air Algérie AH 5017: All passengers died, including German family, French soldiers and Hezbollah members
  17. ^ Charity Mourns French Volunteer Who Died in Air Algerie Crash
  18. ↑ Eistrelle n'était pas sur le vol à cause d'un accouchement imminent
  19. ↑ Crash du vol AH5017: 54 français tués, des familles décimées, la douleur des proches ( Memento of July 26, 2014 in the Internet Archive )
  20. ↑ Families, charity workers among victims of Air Algerie crash ( Memento from July 26, 2014 in the Internet Archive )
  21. ↑ Airplane from "Air Algérie" crashes over Mali - LoNam ( Memento from August 8, 2014 in the Internet Archive )
  22. ↑ http://avherald.com/h?article=477c75de/0002&opt=0
  23. ↑ BEA, Accident to the McDonnell Douglas MD-83, registered EC-LTV, on July 24, 2014 in the region of Gossi (Mali), Press release on April 2, 2015 ( Memento from August 10, 2014 in the Internet Archive )