Mali's president says wreckage of missing Air Algerie flight has been spotted in north of country as 116 passengers feared dead
- Swiftair MD-83 vanished 50mins after take-off from capital of Burkina Faso
- Now Mali president has confirmed wreckage has been found in desert
- Plane 'made detour over fears it was flying into a storm over northern Mali'
- Crew also worried it may collide with another aircraft, airline source said
- Mali air space graded 'high risk' by U.S. aviation authority due to civil war
- Comes after 298 killed in MH17 disaster and 48 die in plane crash in Taiwan
The fate of the Air Algerie flight which vanished with 116 people on board en route from Burkina Faso to Algiers appears to have been uncovered after Mali's President confirmed wreckage has been found.
Ibrahim Boubacar Keita said today that the wreckage of the flight had been spotted in his country's desert north.
It is the third major aviation disaster in a week, following the MH17 disaster in Ukraine and the TransAsia Airways crash in Taiwan yesterday.
Nearly 250 people died in these two crashes. The week's grim toll may now rise by 116 more.
'I have just been informed that the wreckage has been found between Aguelhoc and Kidal,' Keita said during a meeting of political, religious and civil society leaders in Bamako. He did not give any more details.
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Vanished: A Swiftair MD-83 passenger plane (like one above) carrying 110 passengers and six crew disappeared off the radar on its way to Algiers. There are now reports wreckage has been found in northern Mali
His comments were echoed by a top Burkina Faso offical, General Gilbert Diendere, who says the wreckage was located about 31 miles from the border of Burkina Faso near the village of Boulikessi in Mali.
He is a close aide to President Blaise Compaore and head of the crisis committee set up to co-ordinate research for the plane that vanished Thursday in a rainstorm over northern Mali.
"We sent men, with the agreement of the Mali government, to the site, and they found the wreckage of the plane with the help of the inhabitants of the area," said General Gilbert Diendere.
"They found human remains and the wreckage of the plane totally burnt and scattered," he said.
He told The Associated Press that rescuers went to the area after they had heard from a resident that he saw the plane go down 80 kilometers (50 miles) southwest of Malian town of Gossi.
"They found human remains and the wreckage of the plane totally burnt and scattered," he said.
He told The Associated Press that rescuers went to the area after they had heard from a resident that he saw the plane go down 80 kilometers (50 miles) southwest of Malian town of Gossi.
Amid conflicting reports, Laurent Fabius, France's foreign minister said earlier today that no wreckage had been found, but believed the plane had 'probably crashed.'
FURORE OVER CLAIMS CASTRO'S DAUGHTER WAS ON DOOMED FLIGHT
It was earlier reported that Mariela Castro – the Cuban leader Raul Castro’s daughter – was on board the doomed flight.
However, Mariela later confirmed she was not on the flight and was actually attending a meeting in Havana.
An Ouagadougou Airport spokesman had claimed Mariela Castro was on board the plane and various news outlets ran the story. The Facebook page of Ouagadougou airport, where the plane took off, also said she was on board.
Cuban authorities quickly quahsed the rumour and insisted Ms Castro was at the event in the Cuban capital.
Ms Castro is a prominent gay rights advocate and Aids prevention activist.
Air navigation services lost track of the Swiftair MD-83 around 50 minutes into the flight after the crew reportedly asked to change course over fears it was flying into a storm.
The plane, which is operated by Air Algerie, was last picked up on radar at 1.55am GMT en route from Burkina Faso to Algiers.
It should have landed in the Algerian capital around three hours later, but didn't arrive.
Earlier, aviation officials had reportedly said debris from the plane had been spotted in a 'very inaccessible desert area' between Gao and Kidal in Mali.
But Mr Fabius said this afternoon that 'no trace' had yet been seen.
He said: 'The plane has probably crashed. The searches are focusing at this stage on a vast strip of Malian territory around the region of Gao.'
The crash comes after a treacherous week for the aviation industry in which 298 people were killed when flight MH17 plane was shot down over Ukraine and 48 people died in a crash in Taiwan.
Airlines have also cancelled flights into Tel Aviv due to the conflict in Gaza.
The list of passengers on AH5017 includes 51 French, 27 Burkina Faso nationals, eight Lebanese, six Algerians and five Canadians.
Fateful path: Contact was lost with flight AH 5017 while it was still in Malian air space approaching the border with Algeria after taking off from Ouagadougou, the capital of the west African nation of Burkina Faso
There were also four Germans, two Luxemburg nationals, one Swiss, one Belgium, one Egyptian, one Ukrainian, one Nigerian, one Cameroonian and one Malian, Burkina Faso Transport Minister Jean Bertin Ouedraogo said.
The six crew members are Spanish, according to the Spanish pilots' union.
The flight path of AH5017 from Ouagadougou, the capital of the west African nation of Burkina Faso, to Algiers was not immediately clear.
However, Burkina Faso Transport Minister Jean Bertin Ouedragor said the flight had been asked to change route because of a storm around 30 minutes after taking off.
Lost: A map on Ouagadougou airport's website reportedly shows AH5017's last contact while over Mali
PRODUCTION OF MD-80 AIRCRAFT MODELS ENDED 15 YEARS AGO
Spanish airline company Swiftair has a relatively clean safety record, with five accidents since 1977, two of which caused a total of eight deaths, according to the Washington-based Flight Safety Foundation.
The MD-83 aircraft which crashed in north Africa is believed to be around 18 years old and one of four owned by the company.
The model is part of a series of jets built since the early 1980s by McDonnell Douglas, a U.S. plane maker now owned by Boeing.
The jet's two engines are made by Pratt & Whitney, a unit of United Technologies.
McDonnell Douglas stopped producing the MD-80 airliner family in 1999, but it remains in widespread use.
According to British consultancy Flightglobal Ascend, there are 482 MD-80 aircraft in operation, many of them in the United States.
A source from Air Algerie told the AFP news agency said contact was lost while it was still in Malian air space approaching the border with Algeria.
The source said: 'The plane was not far from the Algerian frontier when the crew was asked to make a detour because of poor visibility and to prevent the risk of collision with another aircraft on the Algiers-Bamako route.
'Contact was lost after the change of course.'
A diplomat in the Malian capital Bamako also confirmed said that the north of the country - which lies on the plane's likely flight path - was struck by a powerful sandstorm overnight.
The north of the country also remains locked in conflict after the region fell under control of ethnic Tuareg separatists and then Al Qaeda-linked Islamic extremists following a military coup in 2012.
A French-led intervention last year scattered the extremists, but the Tuaregs have pushed back against the authority of the Bamako-based government.
As a result, the American Federal Aviation Authority has warned U.S. airlines that Mali was a 'high risk' area for commercial routes.
Air Algerie has also reportedly avoided flight paths over the area because of the threat of attacks on commercial planes by militants, according to Fayçal Mettaoui, a journalist for Algerian daily El-Watan.
Danger zones: This graphic shows the areas which U.S. airlines have been banned from flying from or warned to avoid by the Federal Aviation Administration because of conflicts
Waiting for information: Journalists gather outside the Swiftair offices in Madrid after one of its planes operated by Air Algerie disappeared over Malian airspace in north Africa
However, a senior French official said it was unlikely that fighters in Mali had weaponry that could shoot down a plane.
The official, who spoke on condition of anonymity, said the fighters have shoulder-fired weapons which could not hit an aircraft at cruising altitude.
Issa Saly Maiga, head of Mali's National Civil Aviation Agency, said that a search was under way for the missing flight.
'We do not know if the plane is Malian territory.
'Aviation authorities are mobilised in all the countries concerned - Burkina Faso, Mali, Niger, Algeria and even Spain.'
Air Algerie announced that the plane, which is owned by Spanish private airline Swiftair, had gone missing in a brief statement carried by national news agency APS.
It added that the company initiated an 'emergency plan' in the search for flight AH5017, which flies the four-hour passenger route four times a week.
Lost contact: Swiftair, a private Spanish airline, said the plane left Burkina Faso for Algiers at 1.17am GMT
The MD-83 is part of a series of long-range jets built since the early 1980s by McDonnell Douglas, a U.S. plane maker now owned by Boeing.
'Boeing is aware of the report (on the missing aircraft). We are awaiting additional information,' a spokesman for the planemaker said.
The crash comes as a recovery operation got underway in Taiwan to remove plane seats and fuselage from homes after yesterday's plane crash which killed 48 people.
Today the airline announced that stormy weather trailing behind a typhoon was the likely cause of the crash which also left ten people on the plane injured and five on the ground.
The ATR-72 operated by Taiwan's TransAsia Airways was carrying 58 passengers and crew when it crashed while trying to land in the Penghu island chain in the Taiwan Strait between Taiwan and China.
Meanwhile, an international investigation has been launched after Malaysia Airlines flight MH17 was shot down by a surface-to-air missile over Ukraine, killing all 298 people on board.
Concerns were first raised about the plane when it disappeared from radar screens while passing over the city of Donetsk last Thursday.
The plane was travelling at 33,000 feet on a pre-determined flight path when it suddenly vanished from trackers, immediately notifying air traffic controllers of the prospect that the plane had either crashed or made an emergency landing.
An Air Algerie office in Paris. The company initiated an 'emergency plan' in the search for flight AH5017
Flight radars generally monitor moving objects only, so if an aircraft disappears from the screens it either means the plane has become stationary or there has been a fault with the tracking system.
Tragically in the case of MH17 the former was true - but it wasn’t until body parts and plane wreckage were spotted scattered over an eight square-mile area in eastern Ukraine that a crash could be officially confirmed.
In the case of the missing Malaysia Airlines flight MH370, the latter was the true, where it is believed the radar transponder system was deliberately turned off by someone on board.
That plane is believed to have crashed in the Indian Ocean, killing all 239 people on board, but the wreckage has never been found and the cause of the disaster is unknown.
One of Algeria's worst air disasters occurred in February this year, when a C-130 military aircraft carrying 78 people crashed in the mountainous northeast, killing more than 70 people.
Tamanrasset in the deep south was the site of the country's worst ever civilian air disaster, in March 2003.
In that accident, all but one of 103 people on board were killed when an Air Algerie passenger plane crashed on takeoff after one of its engines caught fire.
The sole survivor, a young Algerian soldier, was critically injured.
WILL YOU GET ON A PLANE AGAIN? AVIATION FATALITIES SOAR 300% - BUT EXPERTS INSIST 2014 IS STILL ONE OF THE SAFEST YEARS IN HISTORY
In a week that has seen three major air disasters, just days before the busiest weekend for airports over the summer holidays, questions are being raised about the safety of air travel.
After a Swiftair flight crashed today, killing 119 people on board, a TransAsia Airways jet fell from the sky yesterday with 47 dead, and the Malaysia Airlines jet that was shot down over Ukraine last week with 298 fatalities, travellers are asking whether it is safe to fly.
Aviation experts claim 2014 is one of the safest years in air transport history in terms of the number of crashes.
However, figures reveal fatalities from air disasters have soared by 300 per cent from last year, including the three major plane crashes in the past week.
Plunged from the sky: Rescue workers and firefighters search through the wreckage where TransAsia Airways flight GE222 crashed in Taiwan, killing 48 people
There have been 763 passengers and crew killed in plane disasters so far this year - 498 higher than the 265 people that died in 2013.
The figure is 396 higher than the 10-year average to July of 376.
It also makes July the fifth worst month in aviation history in terms of aviation disaster fatalities.
However, air travel experts are urging holidaymakers that it is still safe to fly.
Harro Ranter, president of the Aviation Safety Network, described 2014 as ‘among the safest years in modern aviation history – since 1946’.
He added the number of fatal plane accidents this year – including today’s Algerian jet – is 12 – five below the ten-year average to July 24.
The 12 incidents in the past seven months include the TransAsia aircraft that crashed while trying to land on an island off Taiwan, killing all 47 people on board.
The figure is down from the 10-year average of 17 fatal crashes.
Mr Ranter said: ‘The recent accidents do not suggest that there is a specific common underlying safety issue.’
However, figures by the network, which tracks crashes and fatalities worldwide, reveal the number of people killed in air travel disasters has increased significantly already this year, due to the two Malaysia Airlines disasters.
The total number of passengers and crew killed on board the missing MH370, and on board the MH17 flight which was shot down while flying over Ukraine is 517.
Ranter told www.thestar.com: ‘It has been an exceptional year because of these two high-profile accidents, which really mark the safety profile of this year.
‘[The number of fatal crashes is] quite significantly below the 10-year average, although the number of fatalities is markedly higher because of these two high-profile accidents.’
According to International Air Transport Association, which represents 240 of the world’s airlines, more than three billion people flew safely on 36.4 million flights last year.
Source: http://www.dailymail.co.uk
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