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Wreckage of Air Algérie Plane, Carrying 116 People, Found in Mali Weather Suspected in Air Algérie Plane Wreck; 116 Are Feared Dead
(about 3 hours later)
DAKAR, Senegal — An Air Algérie jetliner with 116 people on board crashed early Thursday in a remote area of Mali near the borders with Burkina Faso and Niger, officials said. DAKAR, Senegal — The wreckage of an Air Algérie jetliner was found late Thursday in a semidesert area in Mali, and there appeared to be no survivors of the crash, the top military official in neighboring Burkina Faso said Thursday night.
Gen. Gilbert Diendéré, the coordinator of the Burkina Faso government’s crisis unit for the missing jet, confirmed late on Thursday that soldiers had found the wreckage of the plane in a semidesert area about 60 miles south of Gao, Mali. The plane, an MD-83, took off at 1:17 a.m. Thursday from Ouagadougou, the capital of Burkina Faso, on a flight to Algiers with 110 passengers and a crew of six. Air traffic controllers lost contact with the plane less than an hour later. Fierce thunderstorms were pounding the Sahara region where the plane, Flight 5017, would have flown, and the storms probably played a role in bringing the plane down, according to the official, Gen. Gilbert Diendéré, chief of the general staff.
“We found no survivors,” General Diendéré said. “Someone saw the plane fall and alerted us, so we sent a mission there that went to the spot. But we couldn’t examine the wreck because night was falling.” He said the wrecked plane would be examined on Friday. General Diendéré said his men found the plane’s wreckage in an isolated area about 60 miles south of the town of Gao in Mali as night was falling on Thursday. “We saw no survivors,” he said in a telephone interview from Ouagadougou. He said the troops had had to halt their examination for the night.
The general said the crash “must have been because of the weather — there were a lot of storms, and there was lightning.” Daylight may provide answers to the questions about the cause that hung over a day of searching for the plane on Thursday. “We think it was the weather — there were lots of storms, lots of lightning,” General Diendéré said.
Col. Gilles Jaron, a spokesman for the French Army, which dispatched warplanes from a base in West Africa to search for the plane, said late Thursday that he could not confirm that any wreckage had been located. “We are continuing the search,” he said. Shepherds near the Malian desert town of Gossi told local officials that they had witnessed the crash from a distance in the early hours of Thursday. “The shepherds saw the plane fall,” Louis Berthaud, the deputy mayor of Gossi, said Thursday night.
Flight 5017, took off around 1 a.m. from Ouagadougou, the capital of Burkina Faso, on an overnight run to Algiers. Air controllers lost contact with the plane, an MD-83, less than an hour after takeoff, officials said. Mohammed El Moctar, a Malian living in Burkina Faso, said he had spoken by cellphone with a cousin who is a shepherd in the Gossi area, and that his cousin “saw the plane descending to a low altitude.”
The crash comes at a time when the aviation industry is already reeling from the downing of Malaysia Airlines Flight 17 over eastern Ukraine last Thursday, the crash of TransAsia Airways Flight 222 in Taiwan on Wednesday and the suspension of flights to and from Tel Aviv this week because of rocket fire from Gaza. The Federal Aviation Administration lifted its ban on American flights to Israel overnight. “Then he heard a loud rumbling, very loud, and he saw lots of smoke,” Mr. El Moctar said. “He was very scared. He didn’t know what it was.”
The Air Algérie plane’s usual route northward would have taken it over large desert areas where Islamic militant groups have been active, including northern Mali, which was overrun by Al Qaeda’s North African affiliate in 2012. When French and African troops drove the militants back out of towns there last year, the militants left behind stacks of manuals explaining in detail how to use SA-7a and SA-7b shoulder-fired antiaircraft missiles, which can shoot down an airliner flying low for takeoff or landing. But those militants are not known to possess heavier weapons that could strike an aircraft at cruising altitude. The crash comes at a time when the aviation industry is already reeling from the downing of Malaysia Airlines Flight 17 over eastern Ukraine last Thursday, the crash of TransAsia Airways Flight 222 in Taiwan on Wednesday and the suspension of flights to and from Tel Aviv this week because of rocket fire from Gaza.
During the day on Thursday, many officials were at pains to say only that the plane was missing, though the operating assumption all day was that it had crashed. The Burkina government said in a statement late Thursday that searchers had found the wreckage of Flight 5017 around 6:40 p.m., “on Malian territory, about 30 miles from our borders.”
Nearly half the passengers on the plane were from France, which once ruled the region as a colonial power and which still has extensive political and economic interests and a military presence in West Africa. President François Hollande canceled a trip to the French island territories of Reunion, Comoros and Mayotte and called his cabinet together in Paris for an emergency meeting Thursday afternoon, saying that France would mobilize “all its resources,” civilian and military, to find the missing jet. Even so, a French military spokesman, Col. Gilles Jaron, said in Paris late Thursday that he could not confirm that any wreckage had been located. Fifty-one of the passengers on the plane were French citizens, and when it was reported missing Thursday morning, French warplanes based in the region were dispatched to hunt for it. “We are continuing the search,” Colonel Jaron said.
“We still don’t know what happened,” he said. “What we know is that the crew signaled at 1:48 a.m. that it was changing direction because of a particularly difficult weather situation.” President François Hollande canceled a trip to the island of Comoros and the French territories of Reunion and Mayotte and called his cabinet together in Paris for an emergency meeting Thursday afternoon. “We still don’t know what happened,” Mr. Hollande said in the evening after the meeting. “What we know is that the crew signaled at 1:48 a.m. that it was changing direction because of a particularly difficult weather situation.”
The Burkina Faso government said that the aircraft’s last contact with ground control came a few minutes after it had passed northward out of the country’s air space. It said the crew contacted air traffic controllers in Niamey, Niger, at 1:47 a.m. local time, and informed them that the plane had encountered rough weather. France, which once ruled the region as a colonial power, retains extensive political and economic interests and a significant military presence in West Africa. It led an international effort last year to expel Islamist militants from towns in northern Mali that were overrun by Al Qaeda’s North African affiliate in 2012. The militants left behind stacks of manuals explaining in detail how to use SA-7a and SA-7b shoulder-fired antiaircraft missiles, which can shoot down an airliner flying low for takeoff or landing. But those militants are not known to possess heavier weapons that could strike an aircraft at cruising altitude.
Flight 5017’s usual northward route to Algiers would have taken it over desert areas where the militant groups have been active. But French military officials in the region said it was highly unlikely that the Air Algérie flight had been shot down, the way Malaysia Airways Flight 17 was in eastern Ukraine a week ago.
Instead, early guesses about the cause of the crash have focused on the weather.
The Burkina Faso government said that the aircraft’s last contact with ground control came a few minutes after it had passed northward out of the country’s air space. It said the crew contacted air traffic controllers in Niamey, Niger, at 1:47 a.m. local time, and informed them that the plane had encountered storms.
Residents of northern Mali reported a heavy sandstorm overnight. “There was a lot of damage from the wind, especially in the region of Kidal,” said Kata Data Alhousseini Maiga, an official with the United Nations mission in Gao, Mali. “The sand was so thick that you couldn’t see.”Residents of northern Mali reported a heavy sandstorm overnight. “There was a lot of damage from the wind, especially in the region of Kidal,” said Kata Data Alhousseini Maiga, an official with the United Nations mission in Gao, Mali. “The sand was so thick that you couldn’t see.”
Moumouni Barro, Burkina Faso’s director of airports, said in a telephone interview from Ouagadougou that a resident of Gossi, a village in Mali between Mopti and Gao, near the border with Burkina Faso, “saw the plane fall from the sky” southeast of the town during a storm around 1:50 a.m. The jetliner belonged to a Spanish company, Swiftair, and was operated by Air Algérie. Apart from the French citizens, the passengers included 28 people from Burkina Faso, eight Lebanese, six Algerians, five Canadians, four Germans, two people from Luxembourg, and one each from Switzerland, Belgium, Egypt, Ukraine, Nigeria, Cameroon and Mali, the Burkina authorities said. The discrepancy in the total number of passengers could not be explained. Lebanese officials gave a higher figure, 10, for their citizens on the plane, and the Spanish pilots’ union said all six crew members were Spanish, news agencies reported.
The deputy mayor of Gossi, Louis Berthaud, said in a telephone interview: “People saw the plane fall. It was shepherds. About 65 miles from here. The shepherds saw the plane fall.” Swiftair said on Thursday that the jet, bearing the tail number EC-LTV, was built by McDonnell Douglas in 1996. The company merged with Boeing in 1997 and stopped producing MD-80-series planes the next year, but hundreds of the aircraft remain in use around the world. Air Algérie’s last major accident was in 2003, when Flight 6289, a Boeing 737, crashed shortly after takeoff from Tamanrasset in southern Algeria on its way to Algiers. Mechanical failure was blamed for the crash, which killed 102 people.
The plane belonged to a Spanish company, Swiftair, and was operated by Air Algérie. Swiftair confirmed in a statement that it had lost contact with the plane, and said it was carrying 110 passengers and a crew of six.
Officials gave slightly varying counts of the nationalities of the passengers on the flight during the day. The government statement listed 51 French citizens, 27 people from Burkina Faso, 8 Lebanese, 6 Algerians, 5 Canadians, 4 Germans, 2 people from Luxembourg, and one each from Switzerland, Belgium, Egypt, Ukraine, Nigeria, Cameroon and Mali. Lebanese officials gave a higher figure, 10, for their citizens on the plane, and the Spanish pilots’ union said all six crew members were Spanish, news agencies reported.
Swiftair said on Thursday that the jet, bearing the tail number EC-LTV, was built by McDonnell Douglas in 1996. The company, which merged with Boeing in 1997, stopped building the MD-80 series of planes the following year, but hundreds of the aircraft remain in wide use around the world. According to Ascend, an aviation consultancy in London, Swiftair owns five MD-83 jets, and leased two of them to Air Algérie in June.
Air Algérie’s last major accident was in 2003, when Flight 6289, a Boeing 737, crashed shortly after takeoff from Tamanrasset in southern Algeria on its way to Algiers. Mechanical failure was blamed for the crash, which killed 102 people. More recently, an Algerian C-130 Hercules military transport plane bound for Constantine in the northeast crashed into a mountainside in February, killing 77 of the 78 people on board. Strong winds and poor visibility were blamed.