Doomed plane flew into storm

DOUALA, Cameroon -- Three jetliners sat ready for takeoff at Douala International Airport, their crews waiting for a massive thunderstorm to move away. Just a few minutes past midnight, all three radioed air traffic control to check the weather report. They were told the storm would take another hour to dissipate, and the Cameroon Airlines and Royal Air Maroc crews opted to wait it out.

But Capt. Francis Mbatia Wamwea of Kenya Airways Flight 507, already delayed for an hour and carrying scores of passengers with onward connections to catch, judged the weather had improved sufficiently to permit departure for Nairobi, Kenya.

Less than a minute after takeoff early on May 5, the Boeing 737-900 slammed into a jungle swamp during a raging storm, killing all 105 passengers and the nine-member crew.

The dead included Dr. Albert Henn, an AIDS expert who worked at Harvard University and had a home in Barnstable, Mass.; businesspeople from China, India and South Africa; Cameroonian merchants; a Tanzanian returning from peacekeeping duties in Ivory Coast; a U.N. refugee worker from Togo; and Anthony Mitchell, a Nairobi-based correspondent for The Associated Press.

The six-month-old plane was of the newest generation of the world's most popular airliner, which has an excellent safety record. It was only the second time a 737-800 has crashed with the loss of all on board. In September, a plane belonging to Brazil's Gol Airlines collided with an executive jet over the Amazon jungle, killing 154.

After Wamwea gave the go-ahead, the Kenyan Airways crew radioed the tower, pulled away from the gate, and taxied toward Runway 12, heading roughly southwest from the airport. The Douala tower cleared the flight for takeoff a few minutes later, instructing it to report on reaching 5,000 feet.

The pilot acknowledged the clearance from the tower. It's unclear what time that final voice transmission was received from the jet, but the plane nose-dived into a swamp on the outskirts of Cameroon's commercial hub only 30 seconds after becoming airborne.

Wamwea's decision to depart into one of the violent tropical storms that regularly ravage equatorial Africa during the rainy season was most likely the pivotal factor in a sequence of events that led to the crash, said a Cameroonian investigator and a government pilot assisting the probe of Flight 507, both speaking on condition of anonymity because the inquiry was still under way.

Kenya Airways chief executive Titus Naikuni said investigators would have to make the final assessment. The probe was likely to take months.

"We don't want to start speculating here," he said Friday in Kenya. "So whether the pilot did the wrong thing or the right thing, I cannot answer that."

Investigators said they cannot yet discount other factors, including mechanical failure, pilot disorientation or sabotage. But no sign of a blast or fire has been found so far by the search teams, which include seven experts from the U.S. National Transportation Safety Board and two Boeing representatives. Pilots are responsible for the decision whether to take off or land in bad weather.

By SLOBODAN LEKIC, ASSOCIATED PRESS
Source: NorthJersey.com