Air Algérie Flight Reported Missing With 116 on Board
Plane Was Flying From Ouagadougou, Burkina Faso, to Algiers, Algeria
By Christopher Bjork,
Robert Wall and
Stacy Meichtry
Updated July 24, 2014 7:45 a.m. ET
Air Algérie lost contact with Flight 5017 after takeoff from Ouagadougou, Burkina Faso, as the jetliner headed to Algiers with 116 people on board, Algeria's state news agency and the plane's operator said Thursday.
French Secretary of Transport Frédéric Cuvillier told reporters the plane disappeared over Northern Mali, where Islamist militants are fighting the Malian government and French forces. Numerous French nationals were probably aboard the missing plane, Mr. Cuvillier said.
http://si.wsj.net/public/resources/i...0724075930.jpg
The official website photo of Ouagadougou Airport in Burkina Faso. Air Algerie lost contact with a plane after it took off from the airport, Algeria's state news agency and the plane's operator said. Zuma Press
Contact with the Boeing Co. BA -2.34% MD-83, carrying 110 passengers and six crew members, was lost at about 1:55 a.m. local time, 50 minutes after the jet had taken off, the Algerian government's official news agency said in a statement. "Air Algérie launched [an] emergency plan," the agency added. It gave no other details.
An official at the directorate of Ouagadougou Airport said there had been an incident, "but for the moment we don't know anything more." He refused to give his name because he wasn't authorized to speak to reporters.
The missing plane has triggered a second global scramble among aviation regulators and safety officials in as many weeks, following the downing last week of Malaysia Airlines Flight 17 over war-torn eastern Ukraine. It also follows a temporary flight ban imposed by the U.S. Federal Aviation Administration on American carriers using Tel Aviv airport, after a Hamas-fired rocket landed nearby earlier this week. The ban was lifted late Wednesday.
On Wednesday, forty-eight people died and 10 were injured after a TransAsia Airways6702.TW -5.46% plane went down in the outlying Penghu islands, off the coast of Taiwan.
The flight path of the missing Algerian jet isn't yet clear but the FAA has warned airlines to be extra vigilant when flying over Mali.
There is no indication the jet was shot down and no confirmation of a crash.
Still, amid questions by airline executives and regulators over whether MH17 should have been flying over eastern Ukraine, the Air Algérie jet's flight path will be closely scrutinized.
The FAA has banned U.S. carriers of flying over Mali at lower altitudes. The FAA cited "insurgent activity," including the threat of antiaircraft missiles, rocket-propelled grenades and rockets. Apart from worries about insurgent threats in Mali, the Algerian government has been keeping a close watch on airspace on its eastern border, where violence in Libya has led to flight bans there.
Spanish charter company Swiftair was operating the jet for the Algerian flag carrier. "We have no contact with the airplane," the Madrid-based company in a statement. The plane was due to land in Algiers at 6:10 a.m. local time, Swiftair said.
Swiftair operated two MD-83s planes for Air Algérie, one built in 1989 and the other in 1996, according to AeroTransport Data Bank, a French company that tracks airplanes. Privately-held Swiftair was established in 1986 and has a fleet of more than 30 planes. Most of the jets are older models such as Boeing 727s and 737s, as well as MD-83s.
All six crew aboard the missing Air Algérie airplane are Spanish nationals, according to Spain's main pilots' union.
France's foreign ministry said its embassies in Algeria and Burkina Faso were working with the airline and local authorities to locate the plane. France has a large military presence in the region with scores of troops operating in Mali, a landlocked country wedged between Alergia and Burkina Faso.
"We are totally mobilized," a foreign ministry spokesman said.
Accident rates in Africa are typically higher than in the rest of the world as the continent struggles with poor infrastructure that has made flying there more difficult. The International Air Transport Association said there were 61 accidents in the region between 2009 and 2013. The accident rate during the period was 13.47 crashes per million flight hours in Africa compared with the global average of 2.51 crashes.
IATA and the International Civil Aviation Organization have embarked on a program to lift African airline safety performance to global standards by next year.
—Benoît Faucon, Inti Landauro and Dan Michaels contributed to this article.
July 24th, 2014, 13:19
American Patriot
Re: Plane gone over Northern Mali - 116 souls aboard
Plane has crashed (I assumed that when it went missing from radar it crashed, but we made that same mistake with the other Malaysian plane)
UPDATE 5-Missing Air Algerie plane from Burkina Faso has crashed - Algerian official
Thu Jul 24, 2014 9:13am EDT
* Air Algerie jet went missing en route to Algiers
* Burkino Faso says jet asked to change course due to storm
* Passenger list includes 50 French citizens (Adds crash confirmation)
By Hamid Ould Ahmed
ALGIERS, July 24 (Reuters) - An Air Algerie flight crashed on Thursday en route from Ouagadougou in Burkina Faso to Algiers with 110 passengers on board, an Algerian aviation official said.
There were few clear indications of what might of happened to the aircraft, or whether there were casualties, but Burkino Faso Transport Minister Jean Bertin Ouedrago said it asked to change route at 0138 GMT because of a storm in the area.
"I can confirm that it has crashed," the Algerian official told Reuters, declining to be identified or give any details about what had happened to the aircraft on its way north.
Almost half of the passengers were French citizens, an airline official said.
Two French fighter jets based in the region have been dispatched to try to locate the airliner along its probable route, a French army spokesman said. Niger security sources said planes were flying over the border region with Mali to search for the flight.
Algeria's state news agency APS said authorities lost contact with flight AH 5017 an hour after it took off from Burkina Faso, but other officials gave differing accounts of the times of contact, adding to confusion about the plane's fate.
Swiftair, the private Spanish company that owns the plane, confirmed it had lost contact with the MD-83 operated by Air Algerie, which it said was carrying 110 passengers and six crew.
A diplomat in the Malian capital Bamako said that the north of the country - which lies on the plane's likely flight path - was struck by a powerful sandstorm overnight.
Whatever the cause, another plane crash is likely to add to nerves in the industry after a Malaysia Airlines plane was downed over Ukraine last week, a TransAsia Airways crashed off Taiwan during a thunderstorm on Wednesday and airlines cancelled flights into Tel Aviv due to the conflict in Gaza.
An Air Algerie representative in Burkina Faso, Kara Terki, told a news conference that all the passengers on the plane were in transit, either for Europe, the Middle East or Canada.
He said the passenger list included 50 French, 24 Burkinabe, eight Lebanese, four Algerians, two from Luxembourg, one Belgian, one Swiss, one Nigerian, one Cameroonian, one Ukrainian and one Romanian. Lebanese officials said there were at least 10 Lebanese citizens on the flight.
A spokeswoman for SEPLA, Spain's pilots union, said the six crew were from Spain. She could not give any further details.
REGIONAL SEARCH
Swiftair said on its website the aircraft took off from Burkina Faso at 0117 GMT and was supposed to land in Algiers at 0510 GMT but never reached its destination.
An Algerian aviation official said the last contact Algerian authorities had with the missing Air Algerie aircraft was at 0155 GMT when it was flying over Gao, Mali.
Aviation authorities in Burkina say they handed the flight to the control tower in Niamey, Niger, at 1:38 a.m. (0138 GMT). They said the last contact with the flight was just after 4:30 a.m. (0330 GMT).
Burkina Faso minister Ouedrago said the flight asked the control tower in Niamey to change route at 0138 GMT because of a storm in the Sahara.
However, a source in the control tower in Niamey, who declined to be identified, said it had not been contacted by the plane, which in theory should have flown over Mali.
Burkinabe authorities have set up a crisis unit in Ouagadougou airport to provide information to families.
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," he told Reuters. "Aviation authorities are mobilised in all the countries concerned - Burkina Faso, Mali, Niger, Algeria and even Spain."
Aviation websites said the missing aircraft, one of four MD-83s owned by Swiftair, was 18-years-old. The aircraft's two engines are made by Pratt & Whitney, a unit of United Technologies.
U.S. planemaker McDonnell Douglas, now part of Boeing , 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.
"Boeing is aware of the report (on the missing aircraft). We are awaiting additional information," a spokesman for the planemaker said.
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.
Air Algerie's last major accident was in 2003 when one of its planes crashed shortly after take-off from the southern city of Tamanrasset, killing 102 people. In February this year, 77 people died when an Algerian military transport plane crashed into a mountain in eastern Algeria. (Additional reporting by Patrick Markey, Daniel Flynn, David Lewis, Mathieu Bonkoungou, Julien Toyer, Tracy Rucinski, Laila Bassam, Marine Pennetier and Tim Hepher; Writing by Patrick Markey; Editing by Alison Williams)
November 15th, 2014, 22:42
vector7
Re: Plane gone over Northern Mali - 116 souls aboard
SENSATIONAL new pictures alleged to be the first satellite images of the shooting down of Malaysian Boeing MH17 were produced tonight by Russia's main state broadcaster.
By: Will Stewart
Published: Fri, November 14, 2014
The photographs were interpreted by Russian "experts" as indicating that the passenger plane was shot down in July by a Ukrainian warplane and not a ground to air missile.
It was claimed that the space pictures were from a British or US satellite.
The "leaked" images show a missile streaking towards the MH17 flight which was downed, killing all 298 people on board, it was claimed.
It was suggested that the images show how a Mig-29 fighter plane destroys the Boeing passenger plane
The TV presenter Mikhail Leontiev claimed that the mysterious source who provided the images concluded they showed "how a Mig-29 fighter plane destroys the Boeing passenger plane".
The West has repeatedly suggested the plane was shot down by pro-Moscow rebels using a Russian-made BUK missile system.
Russia has argued an unidentified plane was in vicinity at the time of the crash, and that Ukraine and the West have hushed up this fact.
The Kremlin-owned channel's presenter said: "Today we have all grounds to suppose that a State crime was committed by those who deliberately destroyed the plane.
"And by those who are cynically hiding it, having the full information."
We have studied this picture in detail and did not find any sign proving it to be fake
Ivan Adrievskiy, VP of Russian Engineers Union
The extraordinary broadcast came ahead of Western leaders including David Cameron confronting Vladimir Putin over the crash at a summit in Australia.
Channel One claimed: "We have at our disposal a sensational shot, supposedly made by foreign satellite spy during the final seconds of MH17 above Ukraine."
The reported disputed a BUK missile as the cause of the tragedy.
"To cut it short, it looks like there was no BUK and no launch from the ground.
A handout image from Russia's Channel One television, received by Reuters on November 15, 2014, shows what appears to be a fighter jet firing a missile at a passenger plane over eastern Ukraine, where Malaysia Airlines flight MH17 was shot down on July 17. REUTERS
MOSCOW -- Russian state television has released a satellite photograph that it claims shows that a Ukrainian fighter jet shot down Malaysia Airlines Flight 17. But many commentators dismissed the photo as a fake.
All 298 people aboard the Boeing 777 flying from Amsterdam to Kuala Lumpur were killed when it was shot down July 17 over a rebel-held area of Ukraine. Ukraine and the West have blamed the attack on Russia-backed rebels. U.S. military intelligence strongly suspected a surface-to-air missile brought down the jetliner, CBS News reported after the shoot-down.
The photo released Friday by Russia's Channel One and Rossiya TV stations purportedly shows a Ukrainian fighter plane firing an air-to-air missile in the direction of the MH17. The channels said they received the photo in an email.
The U.S. State Department on Friday dismissed the Russian TV reports as yet another "preposterous" attempt by Moscow to "obfuscate the truth and ignore ultimate responsibility for the tragic downing of MH17." It renewed a call to Moscow and Russia-backed separatists to "grant unfettered access for international investigators to the crash site."
Mark Solonin, a Russian author who is an engineer by training, said in his blog that both aircraft looked disproportionate to the landscape and concluded that their images were crudely edited into a satellite picture.
Others noted that the commercial airliner in the photo appears to be of a different type, a Boeing 767.
The Russian television stations stood by the report, saying their source was the Russian Union of Engineers, an obscure Moscow-based group that had previously issued a report claiming that the Malaysian plane had been downed by Ukrainians. The organization's vice president, Ivan Andriyevsky, said in televised remarks that it received the image from a man who said he was a graduate of the Massachusetts Institute of Technology with 20 years experience as an aviation expert. http://cbsnews2.cbsistatic.com/hub/i...uinn2-0718.jpg 15 Photos Remembering the victims of Malaysia Airlines Flight 1Attempts to reach Andriyevsky by telephone and email on Saturday were unsuccessful.Most of the victims of the MH17 crash were Dutch, and a preliminary report issued by Dutch crash investigators in September said the Malaysia Airlines plane was likely downed by multiple "high-energy objects," a finding aviation experts say is consistent with a missile strike.
Pro-Russian separatist rebels in Ukraine have always denied any involvement in shooting down the plane.
However just three hours before MH 17 was downed, The Associated Press reported the passage of a Buk M-1 missile system - a machine the size of a tank bearing four ground-to-air missiles - through the rebel-held town of Snizhne near the crash site.
A highly placed rebel officer told the AP in an interview after the disaster that the plane was shot down by a mixed team of rebels and Russian military personnel who believed they were targeting a Ukrainian military plane.
November 14, 2014
By Veli-Pekka Kivimäki On Friday November 14th, Russian state television ran a story of supposed foreign satellite images showing the last moments of flight MH17, with a fighter jet appearing to fire at the plane. Suspicions arose immediately on Twitter, and inconsistencies were pointed out, quickly leading to the conclusion the image is a crude fabrication.
To start, the image has been posted on a Russian message board on October 15th, claiming to originate from WikiLeaks. This contradicts the origin of these images as being “George Bilt”, whose e-mail dated November 9th was reported as the source of these images.
Overlaying the image with known data points about the MH17 flight path and debris gives the following results, showing the aircraft in the picture off the reported course.
https://1-ps.googleusercontent.com/s...YBj0ArXwEx.jpg
It is clear that the satellite map imagery is created from a composite of different satellite map imagery. Part of imagery is from historical Google Earth imagery, dated 28/08/2012 (co-ords 47°57’12.22″N, 37°50’4.09″E)
Next, it was pointed out the jet shown in the picture is definitely not an Su-25 ‘Frogfoot’ ground attack aircraft, as previously claimed by Russian media to have been involved in the downing of MH17. The profile of the aircraft is more reminiscent of fighter jets like the Su-27.
Looking at the plane that is supposedly flight MH17, the appearance of the aircraft does not match the real 9M-MRD: the Malaysian airlines logo is in the wrong place, with the Malaysia Airlines logo beginning above the wing in reference images for MH17, while the satellite map imagery shows the logo beginning just in front of the wing.
It was then suggested that the livery might actually be the standard Boeing livery, which matches quite well.
Finally, the source of the image was found by a simple image search for “боинг вид сверху”, or “boeing top view” in English.
Another side-by-side comparison by the Bellingcat team:
There are additional details that can be looked at in the image, like the scale of the aircraft in relation to each other, as well as the their scale compared to the rest of the image. It has additionally been pointed out that planes in the satellite map imagery published in the Russia media appear surprisingly clear, compared to reference imagery looked at by the Bellingcat team.
In conclusion, there are several issues with the image, as pointed out above. Thus, the material reported by 1TV cannot be deemed credible to support the theory that MH17 was shot downed by another aircraft.
