A Cuban airplane en route to Havana crashed late 4 November, killing all 68 persons on board, state media revealed. The state-owned Aero Caribe aircraft crashed near Guasimal in the centre of the island in the morning. Al-Jazeera reports many of the passengers were foreigners, but a breakdown by nationlity has not been given.
In Pakistan, a private charter plane with 21 people on board crashed after taking off from Karachi’s airport, leaving no survivors. The plane was chartered to ENI, Italy’s largest oil company, and was headed for the Bhit oil field in southern Sindh.
Links to other sites:Bloomberg, Daily Telegraph, Dawn, Xinhua
Four British tourists died when their Cessna 185 plane crashed while flying over the Nasca geoglyphs in southern Peru 2 October. The plane was piloted by two Peruvian pilots, both of whom also died. Initial reports said the plane’s engine malfunctioned.
The Nasca lines are gigantic lines scored into the desert floor 400km southeast of the capital Lima in the shape of animals or geometric figures and are best seen from the air. In February, seven people died in a similar crash and in 2008 five French tourists also died in a plane crash over Nasca.
Links to other sites: Andina News Agency (Spa) CNN, Daily Mail
Emergency teams in Pakistan continue searching for corpses at the site of a plane crash near Islamabad while national mourning begins.
The Airbus A321 operated by Airblue, crashed during monsoon weather minutes before landing, killing all 152 people on board. It is Pakistan’s worst-ever crash on its own territory.
According to the Pakistan’s civil aviation authority the plane had been ordered to take an alternate approach to the runway, but had veered off course. Finding out why will be a key task of the investigation.
Relatives have joined the teams searching the debris in an attempt to recover the bodies of the victims. Two Americans were among the victims, a US embassy spokesman said, but gave no further details.
Links to other sources: BBC News, Pakistan News
A relatively new Libyan airliner, an Airbus crashed Wednesday morning 12 May trying to land after a flight from South Africa to Tripoli, Libya. The flight reportedly carried 94 passengers and a crew of 11 and all appear to have died except one: a 10-year-old Dutch boy, who is in hospital but does not have life-threatening injuries.
Links to other sites: DutchNews.nl, Reuters
Poland’s acting President Bronislaw Komorowski told Poles Sunday 11 April that they must be united in their grief, as tens of thousands of people thronged the streets of central Warsaw and marched past the palace that had been home to Polish President Lech Kaczynski. Kaczynski died in a plane crash Saturday, along with 96 others, including his wife, the head of the country’s armed forces and the had of its Navy, the central bank governor and several lawmakers. The group was en route to Smolensk, Russia, for a ceremony to commemorate the massacre of Polish officers by Soviet forces in 1940.
Russian authorities say the pilots were warned several times not to land, that they were flying too low, but they did not heed the warnings. It is not yet clear why, and aviation authorities have begun investigating the accident.
Kacyznski’s twin brother, a former president, flew to Russia to identify his body. The brothers’ 83-year-old mother, who has been hospitalized since March with heart trouble, has not yet been informed of the accident.
Links to other sites: BBC, Moscow Times
An Ethiopian Airlines Boeing 737 jet with 92 people on board has crashed into the sea south of Beirut, Lebanon airport just minutes after take-off. Among the 83 passengers en-route to Ethiopia was the wife of the newly-installed French ambassador to Lebanon. Witnesses speak of seeing a ball of flames going into the sea. Lebanese sources say the site of the crash has been located and a search and rescue operation is underway. The plane took off in stormy weather that has plagued Lebanon over the past few days, causing flooding and damage.
Links to other sites: Al-Jazeera, France Info
A Bangkok Airways plane with about 70 people aboard skidded off the runway in heavy rain on landing at the resort Samui Island south of Bangkok, Thailand and hit a control tower. One person, reportedly the pilot, was killed, and several people were injured and taken to hospital. The plane was en route from Krabi, another resort in the south. BBC, Reuters, Romandie News (Fre)
Update 07:30 Investigators announced 5 July they had located the two flight recorders of the Yemenia Airbus A 310 flight that crashed into the sea 30 June with 153 people on board. A 13 year-old girl surived that crash with a broken collarbone. In Paris, France, thousands of Comoran residents marched peacefully 5 July to remember the victims and called for the Comoran government to withdraw the airline’s permission to fly to the archipelago. BEA, BBC and background on the islands from April 2009, New York Times
Further pieces of debris floating in the Atlantic ocean have been located northeast of Brazil and are believed to belong to the Air France Airbus that crashed 1 June. Two Brazilian navy frigates arrived at the approximate crash site last night 3 June, defense officials announced, but the search area has been extended to 500 square km, due to currents. The Brazilian defense minister said that the discovery of a slick of fuel on the surface of the water pointed to the probability that a mid-air explosion was not the cause of the jet’s downing, as it would have burned. Le Monde quotes a source close to the investigation as saying that the plane was flying at an “inadequate” speed, without elaborating. Le Monde (Fre), BBC, Reuters
Updated 9 December 08:30 An F-18 jet has crashed in what the local fire department described as a “heavily populated area” of San Diego, California, in the US, near Marine Corps Air Station Mirama, according to the FAA. The pilot ejected safely but the mayor of the city says three people were killed and a fourth is missing. Details: BBC,San Diego Union-Tribune and update from Reuters
Update, 08:30
Katmandu, Nepal (BBC and TSR, Fre) – Two Swiss tourists and 12 Germans are believed to have been among the 18 people who died when a plane crashed and caught fire at the airport in the eastern Nepalese town of Lukla.
The wing flaps apparently did not open properly on the Spanair plane that crashed in Madrid last month, killing 154 people. An alarm that should have alerted the pilots apparently did not go off, but whether the flap problem was caused by human error or a technical failure is not yet known. BBC
