Thursday 5 December 2013

Moz plane's fall on Namibian radar

Namibian Directorate of Aircraft Accidents yesterday said they now have radar footage showing how the Mozambican plane, which crashed in the Bwabwata National Park on Friday, fell.

Captain Ericsson Nengola told The Namibian that flight LM470 fell at a steep angle and high speed.

In most cases, Nengola explained, planes falling from a height of 38 000 feet at that speed would disintegrate in midair before crashing. He said the pilots did not send a mayday signal.

Nengola also told The Namibian that his team had received a report on the weather conditions at the time of the crash to determine if it had contributed to the accident.

Although he said the investigators were still studying the report, Nengola emphasised that comprehensive investigations would reveal the cause of the accident.

He said the black boxes and voice recorders of the plane, which were retrieved from the scene of the crash on Saturday, will be sent to the United States for analysis as part of the investigations into the accident.

According to Nengola, a Namibian investigator will accompany the voice boxes and the voice recorders to the state-of-the-art National Transportation Safety Board (NTSB) laboratories in Washington DC for the analysis.

Although he could not say when exactly the black boxes and voice recorders will be sent to the USA, Nengola indicated that this could be as early as today.

He said some investigators from the NTSB arrived in Namibia yesterday while two more from Brazil also joined the investigation team.

Namibia has reduced the number of aviation related accidents over the last decade, with improved regulations, better pilots and quality equipment. In 2000, 159 accidents were recorded with one resulting in three deaths. At the time 93 of the accidents were blamed on human error.

By 2013, however, the number of accidents has been reduced to seven with the most recent taking 34 lives. Only three were attributed to human error. The other fatal air crash occurred in March, which took two lives.

In 2011 and 2012, 14 accidents occurred but no fatalities were recorded, while 2010 saw 39 accidents three of which claimed three lives.

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