UTAGE flight 141
| UTAGE flight 141 | |
|---|---|
.jpg) The affected machine during its operation at American Airlines |
|
| Accident summary | |
| Accident type | Collision with objects behind the runway due to overloading and incorrect weight distribution |
| place |
Cotonou , Benin
|
| date | December 25, 2003 |
| Fatalities | 141 |
| Survivors | 22nd |
| Injured | 22nd |
| Injured on the ground | 2 |
| Aircraft | |
| Aircraft type |
 Boeing 727-223
|
| operator |
 Union des Transports Aériens de Guinée
|
| Mark |
3X-GDO
|
| Departure airport |
Conakry Airport , Guinea
|
| 1. Stopover |
Cotonou Airport , Benin
|
| 2. Stopover |
Kufra Airport , Libya.svg){kind=small}
|
| 3. Stopover |
Beirut Airport , Lebanon
|
| Destination airport |
Dubai Airport , United Arab Emirates
|
| Passengers | 153 |
| crew | 10 |
| Lists of aviation accidents | |
On the Utage Flight 141 ( ICAO flight number: GIH 141 ) a serious air accident 727-223 which occurred on December 25, 2003, when a Boeing Union des Transports Aériens de Guinée shortly after take-off from Cotonou in Benin accident. In the incident, 141 of the 163 people on board the plane died and 24 were injured. This is by far the most serious aircraft accident in Benin.
machine
The aircraft involved in the accident was a Boeing 727-223, which was 26 years and 6 months old at the time of the accident. The aircraft had the factory number 21370, it was the 1276. Boeing 727 from ongoing production. The machine was the work of Boeing on the Boeing Field in the state of Washington assembled and completed on 29 June 1977 its first flight before re on July 12 of that year at the American Airlines was delivered. There it was in operation with the aircraft registration N865AA for 24 years until it was bought by the Pegasus Aviation Group on October 18, 2001 . This transferred the Boeing to the Mojave Air & Space Port , where the machine was initially stored. Wells Fargo Bank Northwest acquired the machine on February 20, 2002 and sold it in January 2003 to the Financial Advisory Group (FAG) based in Miami , Florida . On January 15, 2003, FAG leased the aircraft to Ariana Afghan Airlines , where it was operating as YA-FAK . The leasing contract was only possible with the approval of the Federal Aviation Administration , which made it subject to the condition that the crew of the machine was determined by the FAA. After the leasing contract with Ariana Afghan Airlines expired, the aircraft was returned to FAG, which leased it to Alpha Omega Airways from Swaziland , where Boeing received the aircraft registration 3D-FAK . Alpha Omega Airways claimed to be the owner of the machine and from July 2003 leased the machine to UTAGE for a period of 30 days. On October 15, 2003, FAG leased the machine itself to the Union des Transports Aériens de Guinée (UTAGE) , where it received its last identifier 3X-GDO . The three - engine narrow -body aircraft was equipped with three Pratt & Whitney JT8D-9A engines. At the time of the accident, the machine had a cumulative operating performance of 67,186 operating hours with 40,452 take-offs and landings.
After the machine was purchased by FAG, some work was carried out on the machine. Among other things, the engines of the machine are said to have been replaced. No documents were available for carrying out this maintenance work. No maintenance history has been available at all since the purchase by FAG.
In each of the three countries in which the machine had been in operation as a leasing machine from FAG since it was commissioned, it had received an unrestricted airworthiness certificate from the state flight control authority. In all three cases, the operator of the machine was entered in the documents as the owner.
On that day, the machine was used as a replacement for another Boeing 727-200 (3X-GDM) , as an empty flight for transfer had been ordered for this after an inspection that revealed technical defects.
crew
There was a 10-person crew on board the machine that boarded in Conakry . This consisted of a captain, a first officer, a flight engineer, a purser and six flight attendants. The airline only had this one crew to operate the machine. Two executives who had flown on the flight were listed as passengers.
The captain was a former pilot for Libyan Arab Airlines , where he was deployed on Boeing 727 aircraft. On March 11, 2003, the captain signed an annual temporary employment contract with the Financial Advisory Group , which initially placed him as a pilot with Royal Jordanian Airlines for three months and then with Trans Air Benin for six months . As part of his last job, he regularly flew a Boeing 727 on scheduled flights between Cotonou and Pointe Noire . The captain had 11,000 hours of flight experience, including 8,000 with the Boeing 727. In the position of captain he had acquired 5,000 hours of flight experience, all of which with the Boeing 727.
The first officer had been released from Libyan Arab Airlines to be hired by FAG, as had the flight engineer, who had 14,000 hours of flying experience that he had only acquired in the cockpit of a Boeing 727-200. All three members of the cabin crew had started together on December 8, 2003 to fly for UTAGE and have always flown in this composition since then.
Both pilots had Libyan pilot licenses, the validity of which had not been confirmed by the Aviation Safety Authority of Guinea. They also had licenses issued by the United Kingdom as pilots authorized to carry commercial passengers. These licenses had been validated by the authorities in Guinea. The flight engineer had been certified in Libya and his rating was validated by the Guinean authorities.
Passengers
After boarding in Cotonou, there were 153 passengers on board according to the passenger list. More than 100 passengers were Lebanese Christians who wanted to travel to their families over the Christmas holidays . The remaining passengers came from Togo , Guinea , Libya , Sierra Leone , Palestine , Syria , Nigeria and Iran . Among the passengers were also 15 members of a UN peacekeeping force from Bangladesh who were returning from a peacekeeping mission in Sierra Leone and Liberia .
The exact number of passengers could not be determined because it was speculated that there were more passengers on board than officially stated.
Flight history
First flight segment Conakry-Cotonou
The plane started in Conakry and was supposed to fly to Dubai via Cotonou , Kufra and Beirut . It was a scheduled flight that was operated twice a week. When it took off from Conakry at 10:07 a.m., there were initially 86 passengers and 10 crew members on board the machine. The stopover in Cotonou took place at 12:25 p.m.
Boarding in Cotonou
9 passengers got off the plane, while 63 people took the flight from Cotonou. In addition, 10 more people who had arrived in Togo by plane from Lomé joined them. Conditions were chaotic when boarding and loading luggage in Cotonou. In addition to the crew, 153 passengers, including 6 infants, started the onward flight. The machine was thus fully utilized. Two UTAGE executives traveled in the cockpit as passengers.
The purser noticed that many passengers were taking exceptionally large pieces of hand luggage and large amounts of it on board and informed the captain of this. Ground staff began loading the rear cargo compartment when one of the company's representatives instructed them to proceed with loading the front cargo compartment. The identity of the responsible employee could not be clarified later.
When the baggage service staff finished their work, the front luggage compartment was full. In the meantime, the crew prepared for the onward flight. The first officer informed UTAGE executives that he had concerns about the procedure and stressed the importance of determining the payload before departure.
The flight plan for the onward flight to Kufra was completed by the captain in the flight control center. On this occasion, he did not take the weather report prepared for the crew with him.
The machine was refueled with 14,244 liters of kerosene, and the airline's mechanics topped up with oil. The master had the buoyancy aids set to 25 degrees and the air conditioning switched off for takeoff. At 1:47:55 p.m. the crew began to go through the checklists for departure.
the accident
At 13:52:12, the machine was given clearance to roll. When the machine began to roll, a flight attendant informed the cockpit crew that individual passengers who wanted to sit next to their friends were standing in the center aisle of the machine and refused to sit down. The general manager of the airline called the passengers to order, whereupon they finally took their seats.
The scrolling finally resumed. The machine was controlled by the first officer. The take-off run was carried out from the paved and 2,400 meter long runway 24 in a south-westerly direction. The machine took an exceptionally long time to accelerate. After taking off, she gained height very slowly. When the passengers noticed the abnormal behavior of the machine during take-off, they screamed. It grazed the ILS antennas and, 56 seconds after the start of the take-off run, a small building 118 meters behind the runway before it crashed on the beach between the airport and the Atlantic Ocean . At the time of the accident, two airport employees were doing their work in the building behind the runway. They were both injured. The machine hit the beach and skidded over it. It was torn into several parts. First the cockpit was separated, shortly afterwards the right wing and the side engines also tore off. Much of the wreck slid into the sea, with occupants of the machine being thrown into the water. The fuselage turned over and disappeared under the water. Many of those passengers who had not already been killed by the impact forces drowned.
Rescue operation
After the accident, the airport fire brigade rushed to the crash site. The firefighters first became aware of the injured airport employee in the building upon arrival. The firefighters left the airport premises through a farm road in the direction of the crash site on the beach. When they arrived at the scene of the accident, they found some survivors in the wreck, others were in the water or on the beach.
A few minutes later, the fire brigade from Cotonou, the Red Cross and the ambulance service from Cotonou together with the police arrived at the scene of the accident. The deployment of the rescue teams was hindered by residents from the area who had gathered around the accident site.
Pictures from the scene of the accident showed the demolished cockpit section along with other parts of the machine lying on the beach.
Victim
Originally 35 survivors could be rescued, but 13 of them died in the following days. Of the 163 occupants, 141 were killed, including 5 of the 10 crew members, including the first officer. For three of the dead, it was not clear whether they were passengers on the plane or killed passers-by on the beach, but it was suspected that these were passengers too. The survivors included the captain, flight engineer and UTAGE general director.
causes
Overloading and an unknown center of gravity were identified as the main causes of the accident. The pilots were not aware that the machine's center of gravity was far ahead due to the extremely unprofessional loading practices. The configuration of the machine during take-off corresponded to that which would have to be estimated at a take-off with even weight distribution. The pilots calculated with a take-off weight of 78 tons, at which the length of the runway would have corresponded to the required distance for a take-off in the case of an even weight distribution. In fact, the takeoff weight was around 85.5 tons with the machine's center of gravity shifted forwards. It was also estimated that the aircraft had already been overloaded with undeclared cargo on the flight from Conakry to Cotonou, weighing around 3 tons.
The exact number of occupants and the actual total weight of the machine at the start could not be traced, as at least seven different, incompletely completed transport documents were available. The number of specified passengers and victims exceeded both the number of people carried according to the transport documents and the number of available seats in the machine. According to various calculations, between 140 and 148 people were killed in the accident.
Other contributing factors identified were serious shortcomings in the airline's competence and inadequate oversight by aviation safety authorities in Guinea and Swaziland, the two countries where the aircraft was last registered. Another complaint was the incompetence of the airline employee responsible for loading the baggage, who did not include considerations about the impact of the cargo on flight behavior in his actions.
Trivia
On May 25, 2003 , the Boeing 727 N844AA disappeared from Luanda Airport . In July 2003, a Boeing 727 that matched the description of the missing aircraft was sighted in Conakry , Guinea . The US State Department saw no evidence of this and later assumed that the witnesses had seen the 3X-GDO of the UTAGE.
swell
- Accident report in the Aviation Safety Network
- Final report of the accident investigation of the BEA (English)
- BEA final report in French (HTML)
- BEA final report in French (PDF)
- Transcription of the Cockpit Voice Recorder on tailstrike.com
- Accident report on aviation-accidents.net
Coordinates: 6 ° 20 ′ 51 ″ N , 2 ° 22 ′ 15 ″ E