jeudi 2 septembre 2010

Crash: Filair L410 at Bandundu on Aug 25th 2010, impacted building

A Filair LET L-410, registration 9Q-CCN performing a flight from Kinshasa Ndolo to Bandundu (Democratic Republic of Congo) with 18 passengers and 3 crew, crashed into a house about 2km from Bandundu Airport following a go-around at around 13:00L (12:00Z). 19 bodies including crew were recovered, 2 passengers were rescued alive, one of the survivors died later however.
The provincial governor said, that the LET L-410 had gone around, turned and impacted a house at the edge of the city of Bandundu about 2km (1.1.nm) from the airport, the residents of the house fortunately were outside the building. The owner of the airline was at the controls of the aircraft, that apparently ran out of fuel.
Autorities confirmed that one of the survivors succumbed to his injuries in hospital.
On Aug 27th Filair said the only survivor of the crash was able to provide testimony to investigators. According to this statement the crew had been told to land on a "reserve strip" alongside the main runway. The passengers noticed that the airplane was not heading for the runway 11/29 (1380 meters/4530 feet long) and began shouting, then rushed to the cockpit unbalancing the aircraft to a point, where control was lost. Fuel exhaustion was not the problem, 150 liters of fuel were recovered from the wreckage. The black boxes were recovered from the wreckage by the Civil Aviation Authority and are being analysed.
Filair owned two Let L-410 registrations 9Q-CCN, 9Q-CDN and an Antonov AN-24 registration 9Q-CTR.