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AN Air Algerie flight that went missing en route from Burkina Faso to Algiers with 119 people on board has crashed, officials say.
“I can confirm that it has crashed,” an Algerian official told Reuters, declining to give details of where the plane was or what caused the accident.
Aviation sources said the aircraft was a McDonnell Douglas MD-83 leased from Spanish company Swiftair carrying passengers of different nationalities including French and Spanish nationals.
Its six-member crew were all Spanish, said Spain’s airline pilots’ union Sepla, while Swiftair confirmed the aircraft had gone missing less than an hour after takeoff from Ouagadougou.
PASSENGERS FROM AFRICA, EUROPE, CANADA AND LEBANON
Burkina Faso’s transport minister said 50 French nationals were among those on-board, along with 24 Burkina Faso nationals, six Lebanese, five Canadians, four Algerians, two Luxembourg nationals, one Swiss, one Nigerian, one Cameroonian and one Malian.
Transport Minister Jean Bertin Ouedraogo also said the plane sent its last message around 0130 GMT (9:30pm EDT), asking Niger air control to change its route because of heavy rains in the area.
France’s Transport Minister Frederic Cuvillier said after a government meeting that top civil aviation officials were holding an emergency meeting and a crisis cell had been set up.
PLANE DISAPPEARED IN MALI AIRSPACE
Earlier reports had said the plane was a DC-9.
“The plane disappeared at Gao (in Mali), 500 kilometres from the Algerian border. Several nationalities are among the victims,” Prime Minister Abdelmalek Sellal was cited as saying by Algerian radio.
An Air Algerie source earlier said contact was lost while the airliner was still in Malian airspace and approaching the border with Algeria. Its destination was the capital, Algiers.
Air Algerie said the company initiated an “emergency plan” in the search for flight AH5017, which flies the four-hour passenger route four times a week.
The official Algerian news agency said air navigation services lost track of the plane early on Thursday (11.55am AEST).
The flight path of Flight AH5017 from Ouagadougou, the capital of the west African nation of Burkina Faso, to Algiers was not immediately clear.
Ougadougou is in a nearly straight line south of Algiers, passing over Mali where unrest continues in the north.
CONFLICTING REPORTS
There were conflicting reports about the plane, with the International Business Timesstating that the plane had crashed in Niger due to bad weather.
“The flight was said to have been found near Niamey, the capital of Niger,” the report stated.
The Air Algerie source said contact with the plane was lost after it changed course.
“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,” the source said.
UNSTABLE SITUATION IN MALI
Despite an international military intervention still under way, the situation remains unstable in northern Mali, which was seized by jihadist groups for several months in 2012.
On July 17, the Bamako government and armed groups from northern Mali launched tough talks in Algiers aimed at securing an elusive peace deal, and with parts of the country still mired in conflict.
ANOTHER AIR DISASTER FOR ALGERIA?
One of Algeria’s worst air disasters occurred in February this year, when a C-130 military aircraft carrying 78 people crashed in poor weather in the mountainous northeast, killing more than 70 people.
The plane was flying from the desert garrison town of Tamanrasset in Algeria’s deep south to Constantine, 320 kilometres east of Algiers.
Tamanrasset 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.
In December 2012, two Algerian military jets on a routine training mission collided in midair near Tlemcen in the northwest, killing both pilots.
A month earlier, a twin-turboprop CASA C-295 military transport aircraft, which was carrying a cargo of paper for the printing of banknotes in Algeria, crashed in southern France.
The five soldiers and one central bank representative on board were all killed.
Taiwan TransAsia Airways plane crashes during emergency landing, killing passengers
At least 42 people have been killed in a plane crash in Taiwan, officials said, with witnesses and local media reporting the flight came down in a storm after an aborted landing.
Eleven people were reported to have survived, while two French nationals had been confirmed as being on board.
TransAsia Airways flight GE222 was carrying 58 people on a domestic flight when it crashed into houses near Magong airport on the Penghu island chain after requesting a second attempt to land there, local media reported.
The ATR 72-500 twin turboprop was flying from the southwestern city of Kaohsiung to the islands off the west coast and had been delayed due to bad weather as Typhoon Matmo pounded Taiwan, according to the authorities.
“We have found 42 bodies and some body parts so far,” an official surnamed Tsai at the Penghu county fire department told AFP early on Thursday
“There were 58 people on board including four crew members, four children and, so far, according to the information we have, 12 were injured and were sent to hospitals while 46 were missing,” Transport Minister Yeh Kuang-shih told reporters earlier.
Two French nationals were on board the plane and the de facto French embassy had been notified, Yeh said.
There were no immediate reports of casualties on the ground after the plane smashed into houses in the village of Sisi, a couple of kilometres from Magong airport.
Taiwan’s Civil Aeronautics Administration director general Shen Chi earlier said 51 were feared dead in the crash, but later revised the figure to 47.
“The control tower lost contact with the aircraft soon after they requested a go-around (second attempt to land),” Shen told reporters.
Local fire chief Hung Yung-peng told TVBS there were 11 survivors, with all others on board feared dead.
“We rushed 12 people to hospitals soon after our arrival,” Hung said.
“One died at the hospital.” Several television stations also quoted witnesses saying the plane was on fire before it crashed.
Television footage showed anxious relatives of passengers gathered at TransAsia’s counter at Kaohsiung airport, while the airline’s president Chooi Yee-choong bowed in front of television cameras to apologise for the accident.
Taiwan President Ma Ying-jeou’s office said in a statement that it was a “very sad day in Taiwan’s aviation history” and instructed relevant units to clarify the case soon.
Taiwan’s Central News Agency cited the head of the fire department in the Taiwanese county of Penghu as saying that seven people were also injured in the crash on Taiwanese airline, TransAsia Airways.
The report cites the Civil Aviation Administration as saying the flight crashed on Wednesday with 54 passengers and four flight crew on board.
“I can confirm that it has crashed,” an Algerian official told Reuters, declining to give details of where the plane was or what caused the accident.
Aviation sources said the aircraft was a McDonnell Douglas MD-83 leased from Spanish company Swiftair carrying passengers of different nationalities including French and Spanish nationals.
Its six-member crew were all Spanish, said Spain’s airline pilots’ union Sepla, while Swiftair confirmed the aircraft had gone missing less than an hour after takeoff from Ouagadougou.
PASSENGERS FROM AFRICA, EUROPE, CANADA AND LEBANON
Burkina Faso’s transport minister said 50 French nationals were among those on-board, along with 24 Burkina Faso nationals, six Lebanese, five Canadians, four Algerians, two Luxembourg nationals, one Swiss, one Nigerian, one Cameroonian and one Malian.
Transport Minister Jean Bertin Ouedraogo also said the plane sent its last message around 0130 GMT (9:30pm EDT), asking Niger air control to change its route because of heavy rains in the area.
France’s Transport Minister Frederic Cuvillier said after a government meeting that top civil aviation officials were holding an emergency meeting and a crisis cell had been set up.
PLANE DISAPPEARED IN MALI AIRSPACE
Earlier reports had said the plane was a DC-9.
“The plane disappeared at Gao (in Mali), 500 kilometres from the Algerian border. Several nationalities are among the victims,” Prime Minister Abdelmalek Sellal was cited as saying by Algerian radio.
An Air Algerie source earlier said contact was lost while the airliner was still in Malian airspace and approaching the border with Algeria. Its destination was the capital, Algiers.
Air Algerie said the company initiated an “emergency plan” in the search for flight AH5017, which flies the four-hour passenger route four times a week.
The official Algerian news agency said air navigation services lost track of the plane early on Thursday (11.55am AEST).
The flight path of Flight AH5017 from Ouagadougou, the capital of the west African nation of Burkina Faso, to Algiers was not immediately clear.
Ougadougou is in a nearly straight line south of Algiers, passing over Mali where unrest continues in the north.
CONFLICTING REPORTS
There were conflicting reports about the plane, with the International Business Timesstating that the plane had crashed in Niger due to bad weather.
“The flight was said to have been found near Niamey, the capital of Niger,” the report stated.
The Air Algerie source said contact with the plane was lost after it changed course.
“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,” the source said.
UNSTABLE SITUATION IN MALI
Despite an international military intervention still under way, the situation remains unstable in northern Mali, which was seized by jihadist groups for several months in 2012.
On July 17, the Bamako government and armed groups from northern Mali launched tough talks in Algiers aimed at securing an elusive peace deal, and with parts of the country still mired in conflict.
ANOTHER AIR DISASTER FOR ALGERIA?
One of Algeria’s worst air disasters occurred in February this year, when a C-130 military aircraft carrying 78 people crashed in poor weather in the mountainous northeast, killing more than 70 people.
The plane was flying from the desert garrison town of Tamanrasset in Algeria’s deep south to Constantine, 320 kilometres east of Algiers.
Tamanrasset 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.
In December 2012, two Algerian military jets on a routine training mission collided in midair near Tlemcen in the northwest, killing both pilots.
A month earlier, a twin-turboprop CASA C-295 military transport aircraft, which was carrying a cargo of paper for the printing of banknotes in Algeria, crashed in southern France.
The five soldiers and one central bank representative on board were all killed.
Taiwan TransAsia Airways plane crashes during emergency landing, killing passengers
At least 42 people have been killed in a plane crash in Taiwan, officials said, with witnesses and local media reporting the flight came down in a storm after an aborted landing.
Eleven people were reported to have survived, while two French nationals had been confirmed as being on board.
TransAsia Airways flight GE222 was carrying 58 people on a domestic flight when it crashed into houses near Magong airport on the Penghu island chain after requesting a second attempt to land there, local media reported.
The ATR 72-500 twin turboprop was flying from the southwestern city of Kaohsiung to the islands off the west coast and had been delayed due to bad weather as Typhoon Matmo pounded Taiwan, according to the authorities.
“We have found 42 bodies and some body parts so far,” an official surnamed Tsai at the Penghu county fire department told AFP early on Thursday
“There were 58 people on board including four crew members, four children and, so far, according to the information we have, 12 were injured and were sent to hospitals while 46 were missing,” Transport Minister Yeh Kuang-shih told reporters earlier.
Two French nationals were on board the plane and the de facto French embassy had been notified, Yeh said.
There were no immediate reports of casualties on the ground after the plane smashed into houses in the village of Sisi, a couple of kilometres from Magong airport.
Taiwan’s Civil Aeronautics Administration director general Shen Chi earlier said 51 were feared dead in the crash, but later revised the figure to 47.
“The control tower lost contact with the aircraft soon after they requested a go-around (second attempt to land),” Shen told reporters.
Local fire chief Hung Yung-peng told TVBS there were 11 survivors, with all others on board feared dead.
“We rushed 12 people to hospitals soon after our arrival,” Hung said.
“One died at the hospital.” Several television stations also quoted witnesses saying the plane was on fire before it crashed.
Television footage showed anxious relatives of passengers gathered at TransAsia’s counter at Kaohsiung airport, while the airline’s president Chooi Yee-choong bowed in front of television cameras to apologise for the accident.
Taiwan President Ma Ying-jeou’s office said in a statement that it was a “very sad day in Taiwan’s aviation history” and instructed relevant units to clarify the case soon.
Taiwan’s Central News Agency cited the head of the fire department in the Taiwanese county of Penghu as saying that seven people were also injured in the crash on Taiwanese airline, TransAsia Airways.
The report cites the Civil Aviation Administration as saying the flight crashed on Wednesday with 54 passengers and four flight crew on board.
