Bodies not yet clearly identified after birthday flight crash
LAUSANNE, SWITZERLAND – A Piper crashed at 15:30 Saturday 28 April in Tatroz, canton Fribourg, not far from Lausanne in the commune of Attalens, killing six people. The police have not yet been able to give positive identifications to the bodies, but local media say it was a well-known family who lived in the area. They were reportedly celebrating the 60th birthday of a man, reports RTS. Le Matin reports that the son-in-law, L.E., is well known in the construction business in the region.
The man’s son and his companion, the man’s daughter and her husband who runs the construction business, were reportedly in the plane, in addition to a Vaud man who was the pilot.
L.E. and his wife leave three school-age children without parents; they were told late in the afternoon, according to Le Matin.
The plane had left La Blecherette airport in Lausanne at 14:30, and was seen circling the village of Tatroz twice before it crashed.
GENEVA, SWITZERLAND – Russian media Ria Novostisay reports that 31 of the 39 or 43 (accounts vary) people aboard a UTair plane flying from Tyumen to Surgut in Siberia died when the plane crashed while trying to make an emergency landing at 01:50. The crash into a snowy field near the village of Gorkovka occurred shortly after takeoff, abut 3km from the airport. The eight passengers who were injured are reportedly in serious condition.
The plane was an Italian-French ATR-72 jet.
Eyewitness reports indicate that smoke was coming out of the engines and that there was a bang and a flash. Russian officials have reportedly ruled out terrorism and are saying that the accident was most likely a technical failure.
An eyewitness said he saw smoke coming from the plane’s twin engines as it plunged to the ground at around 01:50 GMT.
Another witness said there had been a “bang” and a flash before the craft crashed in a snowy field just outside the village of Gorkovka.
HONG KONG – Air traffic over Hong Kong on 18 September was “like a bad horror movie,” said an air traffic controller at Hong Kong’s airport.
Originally, one near-miss was reported on 18 September, however, an exclusive news report by the The Standard of Hong Kong reveals that a series of near-misses took place over Hong Kong that day.
A senior air traffic controller on duty at the time, told the Hong Kong paper, that the city’s entire airspace was in “utter chaos” that day, with “at least three incoming Cathay Pacific Airways flights calling ‘Mayday’ due to low fuel and at least five flights waiting to be diverted because of bad weather.”
That day an inbound Cathay Airbus A330 from Taiwan found itself in a near-miss with an inbound plane from New York; the planes were carrying 613 people.
According to a statement issued by the Hong Kong’s Civil Aviation Department, the Cathay plane came within 1 nautical mile (2 km) of a Dragonair A330 airplane that was in a holding pattern for landing, which effectively means, they came within six seconds of a mid-air collision. One plane climbed while the other dropped altitude to avoid collision.
However, the controller revealed that, just a few minutes after the Dragonair flight almost collided with the Cathay flight, it had to act fast to “avoid slamming into another Cathay flight,” from Beijing. “These two aircraft were just too close,” he said.
“It really was like a bad horror movie.”
A spokesperson for the Civil Aviation Department confirmed an investigation was being conducted but described staffing in the air traffic control team as “healthy”.
Full details: The Standard of Hong Kong, News 24
Controversial documentary to air on 16 September
CANADA – New allegations by Tom Juby an investigator who looked into the fatal crash of Swissair Flight 111 in the coast of Canada, argue that the fire in the doomed plane could have been caused by an incendiary device, and that a “homicide investigation should have taken place.”
The controversial allegations are made on the CBC program, The Fifth Estate which airs later tonight.
According to CBC News, magnesium and other elements found on some of the wires were first attributed to “long exposure to seawater” by Dr. Jim Brown who later changed his findings.
According to The Fifth Estate, a year into the investigation Dr. Brown, using “auger electron spectroscopy,” discovered “suspicious levels of magnesium — 10 times the anticipated amount — as well as other elements associated with arson in melted wiring from the section of the plane that suffered the greatest fire damage.”
Previously, the Transportation Safety Board of Canada concluded that the accident was “caused by a fire in the cockpit, likely sparked by an electrical fault,” and has refused to discuss any possible criminal acts.
On 2 September 1998, Swissair Flight 111 was on a flight from New York City to Geneva when it crashed into the Atlantic Ocean southwest of Halifax International Airport, at the entrance to St. Margaret’s Bay, Nova Scotia.
The plane was carrying 215 passengers and 14 crew members, none survived.
A Saudi prince, a relative of the former shah of Iran, high profile UN officials and a half a billion dollars of diamonds and gems were on board.
World Radio Switzerland reported on 15 September that the Swiss public TV, SRG SSR, refused to broadcast the film “because it considers [it] mere speculation.”
The documentary however, can be viewed worldwide directly online on the CBC website.
MOROCCO – At least 78 people were killed when a Moroccan military transport plane crashed into a mountain in the south of the country during bad weather, said the state news agency, MAP.
“Seventy-eight people were killed, and three were seriously injured following a crash, on Tuesday, of a C-130 aircraft of the Royal Armed Forces northeast the southern city of Guelmim,” the Royal Armed Forces (FAR) said in a statement to the state news agency.
King Mohammed VI sent messages of condolence to the families of the victims.
The crash is Morocco’s worst known air disaster since 1973, when 105 people were killed after a Royal Air Maroc aircraft crashed near the capital Rabat.
Further details: MAP.
Geneva, Switzerland (GenevaLunch) – Thirty-two of the 33 passengers and crew on a United Nations plane died when it crashed while trying to land at the Kinshasa Airport in DRC (Democratic Republic of Congo) Monday afternoon 4 April. The plane was carrying UN staff, most but not whom all of worked for Monusco, the UN’s stabilization mission in Congo, but the UN news service reports that there were also five people on board who worked for humanitarian organizations.
The plane was trying to land in heavy rain, according to the UN, when it overshot the runway at 13:30, after a flight from Kisangani in the northeast.
Former US Senator Ted Stevens of Alaska and four others died after their amphibious plane crashed during a fishing trip in Alaska.
The survivors spend the night stranded on a rocky slope.
The former head of NASA, Sean O’Keefe and his teenage son survived the fatal accident. A 13-year-old boy also survived but had to spend the night near his dead father and the senator.
A teenage girl and her mother died in the accident.
Full details: Associated Press
Andrew Joseph Stack, 53, appears to have flown his Piper Cherokee plane into an IRS (tax authority) building in Austin, Texas intentionally, say authorities in the city, after setting his house on fire 18 February. Two people died in the crash into a building where 200 people work, and two others were injured. Firefighters had contained most of a fire started by the crash but were working during the night to put it out completely. Stack’s web site appears to reflect a long-held grudge against the US government and the IRS in particular.
The Brazilian air force announced last night 4 June that the debris it had recovered from the sea near the presumed crash site of the Air France Airbus A330 was not in fact from the stricken jet. Referring to a wooden pallet, General Ramon Borges Cardoso, the air force spokesman, said it did not come from the cargo hold of the plane, as reported yesterday. Fuel slicks seen from the air were reportedly also not kerosene from the plane but oil from a ship. BBC, Le Monde/AFP (Fre)
Paris, France (GenevaLunch) – Air France officials have confirmed that six Swiss nationals are among the passengers of the missing flight from Brazil to France. Most of the 228 persons on board were French and Brazilian with 61 and 58 passengers respectively.
Debris has been found off the coast of Senegal although it has not been confirmed it belongs to AF447. The missing plane sent an automatic message to Air France signalling an electrical circuit malfunction and loss of pressure about four hours into the flight.
An airplane carrying children from California to a ski vacation in Butte, Montana, crashed Sunday as it neared the airport, apparently killing all 17 aboard. Reuters
A Continental Airlines connecting flight operated by Colgan Air, flying from Newark, New Jersey to Buffalo, New York, crashed into a house five miles short of the runway, killing one person on the ground and all 48 aboard the plane. The cause of the crash is not yet known but several witnesses said they saw flames before the crash, reports Reuters.
DNA tests have confirmed that the bones found near the site of an airplane crash in a remote part of the US state of Nevada are those of adventurer Steve Fossett, who disappeared in September 2007. BBC
