Kenya Airways Flight 507
3.95523055555569.7494444444444Koordinaten: 3 ° 57 ' 19 " N, 9 ° 44' 58" E
The affected machine in January 2007
Kenya Airways Flight 507 was a flight of a Boeing 737-800 Kenya Airways from Douala International Airport in Cameroon to Kenya's Jomo Kenyatta International Airport on May 5, 2007. The plane crashed with 105 passengers and nine crew members on board just after the start in a dense mangrove forest area southeast from Douala in Cameroon. In this case, all the occupants were killed.
Running of the flight
The machine was launched on Friday, 4 May 2007 at Abidjan in the Ivory Coast and landed in the Cameroonian coastal city of Douala between, there to pick up more passengers. The planned for midnight launch of Douala was delayed due to heavy rain one hour. Shortly after the departure sent the machine out an automatic distress signal, which is usually the case of shocks, such as in a collision triggered. It was first received from a ship off the West African coast. The control center could no longer reach the pilots then.
Kenya Airways set up a crisis center and a telephone number for relatives. At the airport in Nairobi, where the machine early Saturday morning should have arrived, many members waiting for news. The Kenyan government was deeply dismayed and said the family their condolences. The former Kenyan Foreign Minister (until 2005) Chirau Ali Mwakwere flew in the evening of the crash with a delegation to Cameroon, among them a terrorism expert.
Heavy rain, technical problems and contradictory evidence of the accident made it difficult to search. Only two days later, on the evening of May 6, the wreckage of the aircraft is another reason for strong criticism of the search teams was found in a dense mangrove forest of fishermen, just 5.42 km away from the runway. This found no evidence of survivors. Numerous speculations about the cause of accidents are caused mainly by the short distance of the scene from the runway. The cause of the accident must have occurred immediately after the start, the distance corresponds to about half a minute of flight time.
The flight data recorder ( black box) and the remains of 81 people were rescued.
Aircraft
The Boeing 737-800 made its first flight on 9 October 2006 and was delivered on 28 October 2006 on Kenya Airways.
Crew and passengers
On board the Boeing 737-800 there were 105 passengers and nine crew members. According to the chief of Kenya Airways, Titus Naikuni, belonged to these 23 different nationalities; and European passengers were on board. From the German-speaking Swiss was killed.
- 35 Cameroon
- 15 India
- 09 Kenya (including 6 crew members)
- 07 South Africa
- 06 China; Ivory Coast; Nigeria
- 05 United Kingdom
- 03 Niger
- 02 Central African Republic; Democratic Republic of Congo; Equatorial Guinea
- 01 South Korea; Ghana; Sweden; Togo; Mali; Switzerland; Comoros; Egypt; Mauritius; Senegal; Republic of Congo; Tanzania; United States; Burkina Faso
- 02 unknown nationality
Investigations
The accident investigators have found that the 52 -year-old pilot brought the machine due to spatial disorientation in a too strong legal position. The copilot instructed the captain mistakenly suggest to keep the machine to the right and corrected later with " Left, left ". Due to the excessive curve and the subsequent spiral flight, the aircraft sank more and more until it finally crashed.