Another plane missing - Algeria Flight AH 5017

[Hillary]

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-africa-28460625

Algeria's national airline, Air Algerie, says it has lost contact with one of its planes flying from Burkina Faso to Algiers across the Sahara.

Contact was lost about 50 minutes after take-off from Ouagadougou, the airline said.

The passenger airliner was last seen at 0155 GMT, it added. It should have landed at 0510.

Flight AH 5017 had 110 passengers and six crew on board, Spanish airline Swiftair, which owns the plane, said.

"In keeping with procedures, Air Algerie has launched its emergency plan," Air Algerie officials, quoted by APS news agency (in French), said.

The plane is operated by Air Algerie and chartered from Swiftair.

In a statement (in Spanish), Swiftair said that the aircraft was an MD83 and that they were unable to establish contact with the plane.

An Algerian official had previously told Reuters that the plane was an Airbus A320.

An unnamed Air Algerie company source, speaking to AFP news agency, 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."

Flight AH 5017 flies the Ouagadougou-Algiers route four times a week, AFP reported.

Algerian nationals were among those on board, Algerian newspaper El-Nahar reported.

In February, a military plane in Algeria crashed, killing 77 people on board.

The Hercules C-130 crashed into a mountain in Oum al-Bouaghi province, en route to Constantine, in bad weather conditions. Only one person on board survived.

[Zaune]

Well, if you're going to have an in-flight mechanical failure that forces you to make an emergency landing, the Sahara is arguably one of the better places to be when it happens: Lots of big, empty salt flats to choose from as a landing site and no worries about power lines or buildings. If the plane didn't fall apart in mid-air, there's a good chance the crew and passengers are still alive.

I just hope they have plenty of bottled water.

[Thanas]

Then again, if you go down over a warzone like Mali....

[InsaneTD]

Note to self, don't board any flights if it has 17 in the flight number.

In all seriousness, I hope everyone is found alive and well.

[Zaune]

Livestream from BBC News

At time of posting, the French Air Force has two fighters tracing the airliner's probable route, and the last radio message from AH5017 gave their exact position and heading. We'll know one way or the other pretty soon.

[Borgholio]

At least it'll be easier to find a plane in the Sahara than in the open ocean. With any luck they were able to land "safely"

[slebetman]

In another news, that kid who was trying to break the youngest solo flight around the world record died in a crash yesterday. I was just telling my friend that that's the third major incident in one week - Malaysia Airlines MH17, TransAsia GE222 and that kid. Now this happens.

I know that it's all coincidence - given enough time all probabilities are likely. But it doesn't help me feeling worried that my mom and sister are flying home from Ireland next week. And the scheduled Etihad flight they'll be on will be flying over southern Turkey and parts of Syria.

[Broomstick]

When you get one airplane crash in the news suddenly everything little thing in aviation becomes headline news. Incidents and accidents you'd otherwise never hear about suddenly become headlines.

Which doesn't eliminate the tragedy, of course, but despite all that, and despite statistical blips, flying really is the safest form of transportation we have. On average.

Still... yeah, sad.

[Broomstick]

In another news, that kid who was trying to break the youngest solo flight around the world record died in a crash yesterday.

I also wanted to note that attempting a round-the-world trip in a single-engine Beech Bonanza is a couple of orders of magnitude more risky than commercial aviation. Trying to do it in 30 days just makes it that much more difficult.

Also, the kid was not solo, he was flying with his father, also a pilot. He would have been the youngest co-pilot to circumnavigate the globe.

[Zaune]

There's been two or three unconfirmed reports of wreckage being found in separate locations up to 250 miles apart, but nothing definite yet.

Does anyone know if airliners ever carry distress radiobeacons? It'd be a logical thing to carry as standard equipment on that particular route in case they were forced down and couldn't get electrical power restored.

[Sea Skimmer]

Some do but they aren't all that crash survivable and primarily meant for landings in the water, and even then don't always deploy if the planes sink quickly. Its really hard to make a radio antenna system that can survive plowing into land so they don't even try to design for that.

Black boxes themselves only work out because only a small memory core actually has to survive the crash, and buried inside the tail of the aircraft. Good for impact protection, but a radio beacon in this position would often fail from antenna damage, the locators on the black boxes are not hardened.

At this point a better option seems to be those satellite based tracking systems at least if given independent power supplies and moderate hardening. Then they could broadcast GPS right until the moment of impact even were the plane broken up already in mid flight, and this could automatically trigger a crash warning for whomever is monitoring the system at the same time.

[Sea Skimmer]

It looks like the plane has been firmly found, but was observed crashing from over a wide radius leading perhaps widely inaccurate reporting?

http://www.bbc.com/news/world-africa-28475335
The wreck of a plane that disappeared with 116 people on board on a flight from Burkina Faso to Algiers has been found in Mali, officials say.

The Burkinabe army said the plane, operated by Algeria's national airline Air Algerie, had crashed about 50km (30 miles) from the Burkina Faso border.

Air traffic controllers lost contact with the plane early on Thursday after pilots reported severe storms.

The passengers included 51 French citizens.

The McDonnell Douglas MD-83 - Flight AH 5017 - had been chartered from Spanish airline Swiftair.

Malian state television confirmed that the wreckage was found in the village of Boulikessi by a helicopter from Burkina Faso, the Associated Press news agency reports.

Gilbert Diendere, a Burkina Faso army general, said Mali had agreed to their cross-border search which was launched after a resident in Gossi described seeing a plane go down to the south-west of the town.
"They found human remains and the wreckage of the plane totally burnt and scattered," he told AP.

French fighter jets and UN helicopters had been hunting for the wreck in the more remote desert region of northern Mali between Gao and Tessalit.

Contact with Flight AH 5017 was lost about 50 minutes after take-off from Ouagadougou on Thursday morning, Air Algerie said.

The pilot had contacted Niger's control tower in Niamey at around 01:30 GMT to change course because of a sandstorm, officials say.

Burkina Faso authorities said the passenger list comprised 27 people from Burkina Faso, 51 French, eight Lebanese, six Algerians, two from Luxembourg, five Canadians, four Germans, one Cameroonian, one Belgian, one Egyptian, one Ukrainian, one Swiss, one Nigerian and one Malian.

The six crew members are Spanish, according to the Spanish pilots' union.

Flight AH 5017 flies the Ouagadougou-Algiers route four times a week, AFP reported.

BBC West Africa correspondent Thomas Fessy says it a route often used by French travellers.

Now the question is was it terrorism from the Mali separatists, Al-Qeada in Africa, or the more likely reason of something just went wrong.

[Enigma]

Well a sandstorm was mentioned. Maybe it contributed to the crash?

[Zaune]

Well, fuck.

[InsaneTD]

Flying through a sandstorm would have to be just as bad for the aircraft as flying through volcanic ash.

[Broomstick]

Does anyone know if airliners ever carry distress radiobeacons? It'd be a logical thing to carry as standard equipment on that particular route in case they were forced down and couldn't get electrical power restored.

Yes, "radiobeacons" are required equipment on all licensed aircraft, from single-seaters up to airliners and that regulations has been on the books for over half a century now. In the US there are exceptions for ultralights (although many ultralight flyers install them anyway). Most countries have no exceptions - if it's a licensed flying machine it has a distress beacon.

Of course, having one work after a crash is always problematic, as already noted. They aren't as tough as black boxes (which also, in their own way, can function as locator beacons).