19 plane crashes in year 2007

The MD-83 was leased by Atlasjet airline from Istanbul-based World Focus Airlines. It departed Istanbul, Turkey, for a passenger flight to Isparta, Turkey, with 50 passengers and 7 crewmembers onboard. The plane crashed by night in mountainous terrain a few minutes before landing at Isparta airport. There are no survivors. A few seconds before the accident, the pilot had informed the Isparta airport’s control tower that the landing strip was in sight and descent was proceeding normally. The air traffic controller instructed them to continue their approach. But then, the aircraft disappeared from the radar screen. The plane's wreckage was found five hours later on a 1,830-metre (6,003-foot) hill called Turbe Tepe (Shrine Peak), near Cukuroren village, some 12 kilometres (7 miles) from Isparta airport. The fuselage and wings of the aircraft were torn apart and pieces of metal and bodies, some still in their seats, were scattered across the area. The McDonnell Douglas-83 crashed in an area that was outside its flight path, but it is still unknown why the plane veered off course. It is suspected the plane's tail hit a hilltop and that the MD-83 fell on its fuselage with the force of the impact.

The brand new Airbus A340-600 was carrying out engine-run-ups within Airbus facilities in Toulouse, France, and was due to be delivered to Etihad a few days later. For undetermined reasons, the aircraft accelerated quickly and smashed into a blast concrete barrier. The plane broke in two a few meters aft the cockpit, and ended tilted on the right and laying on the tail. Among the 9 people onboard, 2 sustained serous injuries and 2 sustained minor injuries. 1 person on ground has also been seriously injured. There is no fatality. Engine-run-ups are usual before aircraft deliveries. It consists of increasing the throttle, sometimes up to full throttle, while monitoring engine behaviour. The purpose of those tests is to ensure the engines behave as it is designed for, or to tune them. Such tests are performed in dedicated area surrounded by concrete wall protecting from engine blast. In order to prevent the plane from moving, parking brakes are engaged and wheel blocks are installed. In case anything goes wrong, the crew must reduce the throttle immediately.

The Let 410 departed Villavicencio, Colombia, at 15:19 on a domestic flight to Uribe, Colombia, where it was scheduled to arrive 31 minutes later. The plane disappeared from radar screens over the province of Cordillera Oriental. It never arrived and was declared missing. The wreckage was spotted on a mountain after a three-day search that included two helicopters and two Colombian Air Force fixed-wing aircraft. The plane crashed in a remote area at an elevation of 2400 m, where there were concerns that Marxist insurgents from the Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia (FARC) could have been operating. None of the 15 Colombian soldiers and three crewmembers survived. Poor visibility was reported as a possible factor in the crash of the Czech-made LET-410, a two-engine propeller aircraft.

The Russian-made Antonov 26 owned by El Sam Airlift, and chartered by Malift Air, was on a passenger flight from Kinshasa, Congo, and Tshikapa, Congo. The plane crashed seconds after takeoff from Kinshasa. Shortly after takeoff the nr.2 engine failed. Some reports say propeller blade(s) separated from the engine. The airplane lost height, contacted trees and crashed onto Mayulu Avenue in the Kingasani neighbourhood, striking three houses. The plane burst into flame after it crashed in this populated area. One crew member is said to have survived the accident, but the 21 other people onboard died (there have been many conflicting reports regarding the number of passengers: a figure of 19 has also been mentioned in press reports). At least 28 fatalities have been reported on the ground. Several houses have been completely destroyed by fire. El Sam Airlift is banned from flying in Europe because of safety concerns. Ageing planes in Congo suffer from a lack of maintenance and spare parts but they are often the only way to transport people and goods across the vast central African country that is slowly recovering from a 1998-2003 civil war.

The MD-82 belonging to One-Two-Go airline departed Bangkok, Thailand, for a domestic service to Phuket, Thailand. The jet was carrying 123 passengers and seven crew members when it left Bangkok. The aircraft crashed as it attempted to land at its destination airport in bad weather. It was raining at Phuket when the MD-82 approached the airport, and the visibility was very poor. On landing the airplane skidded off the side of the runway, broke into two and ended into trees. The plane was then engulfed in smoke and fire and caught fire. 89 people onboard were killed, and several others injured. Some victims died of fire; some were thrown out of the airplane. The causes of the accident are unknown yet. While the plane was on final approach, the control tower warned the crew of a treacherous wind shear at the airport, but the pilot decided to land anyway. The wind-shear (sudden change in wind direction that can destabilize a plane) had probably caused the aircraft to dive and hit the runway. Then, heavy rains could have contributed to the plane skidding off the runway. The pilot had reportedly asked to abandon the landing and circle around again because he could not see the runway, but the plane was already too low.

The Antonov An-32 was on a cargo and passenger flight from Kongolo (Congo), to Goma (Congo), the main city in North Kivu province, with around 9 tonnes of cassiterite (tin oxide) and other minerals. Goma is a transit point for many mineral exports from eastern Congo. Twelve passengers also boarded the flight. The airplane developed engine trouble about ten minutes after takeoff. The crew attempted to return to the Kongolo but the airplane was unable to maintain altitude and hit trees, crashed and burned 3 kilometers short of the runway. The plane was flying about 3 tons over the recommended capacity. Among the 15 people on board (12 passengers and 3 crew members), only 1 survived. The government has suspended the license of Great Lakes Business Co., the company that operated the plane, along with several other companies for negligence and overloading planes.

The Boeing 737-800 belonging to China Airlines departed Taipei, Taiwan, and landed at Okinawa, Japan. Okinawa Airport traffic controllers had received no report from the pilot indicating anything was wrong as the plane came in to land and even as it stopped near the terminal to unload passengers. Soon after the plane arrived at the stand, a fire erupted in or near the left engine. All 157 passengers fled the Boeing 737-800 unhurt on inflated emergency slides. The eight-member crew also safely left the plane. A figure believed to be the pilot hung onto the cockpit window for several seconds before dropping to the tarmac and sprinting away from the exploding plane. When all occupants had evacuated, a large explosion occurred in the centre of the airplane.

The Twin Otter DHC6-300 was operating a service to the French Polynesian capital Papeete, on the main island of Tahiti with 19 passengers and one pilot on board. Immediately after takeoff from Moorea-Temae Airport, the Twin Otter veered to the right and began to descend until it struck the sea. No distress call was received by the Air Traffic Controller. All the people onboard were killed. The airline says the twin turboprop crashed 1.85km (1 NM) from the end of the runway. The plane rapidly sunk under several hundred meters of water. The investigation shows that about 30 seconds after takeoff, the aircraft starts an abnormal descent. The pilot seems surprised. A few seconds later, the plane smashes onto the water surface. While the plane is descending, two sounds are identified as pilot actions on flight control commands, but the aircraft maintains the descent, as described by witnesses and confirmed by the violence of the impact. The engines are working normally and symmetrically. The accident has probably been caused by a rupture of the elevator control cables, which were significantly worn and, for one of them, broken in the rear section.

The Antonov An-12 freighter belonging to Atran Airlines was on a domestic cargo service to Omsk and Bratsk. It crashed seconds after taking off from Moscow’s Domodedovo Airport, in Russia. None of the seven occupants of the aircraft survived. The plane came down and crashed in woodland near Semivragi, 4km (2.1nm) from the airport. Information from the cockpit voice recorder are analysed in an effort to determine the cause of the accident. But the An-12's flight-data recorder was destroyed by fire. Russian authorities have suspended the operations of Moscow-based freight airline Atran following the crash. While the illegal overloading of freighters has been a concern within the country, Russia's transport ministry says that the aircraft was carrying just 9t of cargo - less than half of the An-12's maximum payload capability of 20t.

TAM Flight 3054 was a regular flight from Porto Alegre, Brazil, to São Paulo-Congonhas, Brazil. The plane was carrying 181 passengers and 6 crewmembers when it crashed on landing, killing all people onboard and 11 people on ground. The Airbus A320, operated by TAM SA, the country's biggest airline, skid off the end of the rain-soaked runway on landing, cleared the airport fence at the end of the runway and the busy highway but slammed into a gas station and a TAM building, causing an inferno. The video of the landing shows the plane speeding up after touching down very close to the designated limit for landings. The airline also said one of the Airbus 320's two thrust reversers was deactivated. Flying with only one thrust reverser is allowed and safe, but reduces braking power.

The Boeing 737 plane carrying 79 passengers crashed and broke in half when it landed at an airport in M'banza Congo. 5 people were killed, and several injured. The plane belonging to Angola's state TAAG airline was en route from Luanda to M'Banza Congo, which is in northern Angola near the border with the Democratic Republic of Congo, 300 kilometers (180 miles) north of the capital, Luanda. The aircraft's landing gear appeared to give way as the plane touched down halfway down the runway: two tires were punctured. The crew lost control, bounced, a wing tip hit the ground and the plane crashed into a small brick house built on grassy land next to the runway. The aircraft's front section broke off from the fuselage and came to rest about 50 meters away from the rest of the plane. In Africa, rural airports often have dwellings next to the runway, and pedestrians and livestock can cross the tarmac. The M'banza Congo airport has no air traffic control tower.

The plane, a Russian-made An-24, was flying between two popular tourist destinations in Cambodia. It departed from Siem Reap — home to the popular Angkor Wat temple complex — to the coastal city of Sihanoukville. The airplane crashed in a remote, mountainous terrain, in the Kom Chhay Mountains, near Sihanoukville. The airplane was supposed to fly around the eastern side of Bokor Mountain near Kampot, but it was found to have taken the western course because of heavy rains in the original course. Because Bokor Mountain rises 1,080 meters above sea level, pilots are expected to maintain a minimum altitude of 1,200 meters in the area. At the time of crash, the aircraft was flying at just 600 meters. The control tower warned the crew it was flying too low, but the pilot ignored the warning, saying, "I know this terrain well." Communications ended immediately afterwards. The airplane crashed into an 800-meter mountain. The crash site is near the top of a northwestern sloping point of the mountain. The area, called Phnom Damrei or Elephant Mountain, is about 40 km or five minutes by air from Sihanoukville Airport, the plane's destination. The 22 people onboard were killed. The plane belonged to PMT Air, a small Cambodian airline that began flying the route in January.

The Kenya Airways Boeing B737-800 bound for Nairobi, Kenya, with 114 people on board crashed shortly after takeoff from Douala, Cameroon, in torrential rain. The flight originated in Ivory Coast but stopped in Cameroon to pick up more passengers. The plane had departed an hour late because of rain. It issued a distress call a few minutes after takeoff, but then lost contact with the radio tower. The wreckage was found southeast of Douala, 6km far from the runway end, along the plane's flight path from the Douala airport - more than 40 hours after the Boeing 737-800 lost contact with the airport. All 105 passengers and nine crew were killed. The causes of the accident are under investigation, but it is remotely possible that the plane could have inadvertently gone into some extremely turbulent air and suffered massive hail damage or a sudden structural failure. The final moments of Kenya Airways Flight 507 were preceded by anxiety over the weather as the plane sat on the tarmac for more than an hour. 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 the Captain 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. Douala tower cleared the flight for takeoff at 1 am, instructing it to report on reaching 5,000 feet (1,500 meters). The plane took off, but 30 seconds after becoming airborne the plane nose-dived into a swamp. Flight crews are responsible for the decision whether to take off or land in bad weather, usually depending on guidelines prescribed by their airline. The Boeing 737-800 is fitted with weather radar: pilots routinely take off into stormy weather and then rely on radar to guide them around the towering cumulonimbus thunderheads that can cause structural damage to airframes. While air traffic control can take measures to prevent flights, including closing down airports, such drastic measures are highly unusual outside the northern hemisphere where heavy winter snows can block runways and bring traffic to a standstill. The wreckage in the thick jungle indicated the plane flew nose-first into the ground at a nearly 90 degree angle. It was found buried deep in a crater of reddish-brown muck with only tiny bits of the rear fuselage and wings left above ground. Trees nearby were smashed, but otherwise the jungle canopy remains intact, making the site almost invisible from the air. Investigators said the nose-dive indicated that a violent gust of wind within a thundercloud may have flipped the airliner over, throwing it into a fatal dive. The low altitude (3000 ft), would have made it impossible to recover the plane. The impact with ground was extremely violent.

The Ilyushin IL-76 belonging to the Belarus-based Transaviaexport Airlines had delivered equipment for Ugandan peacekeepers in Mogadishu, the Somalia capital. It crashed shortly after takeoff from Mogadishu airport. All 11 people onboard were killed. The Russian-made plane was shot down by an anti-aircraft missile just after takeoff. The airplane suffered substantial damage following the missile impact and became uncontrollable. It came down in an inaccessible, wooded area in the outskirts of north Mogadishu. Witnesses said they saw the burning plane come down and heard the sound of a missile being fired shortly before the crash. Other said that one of the wings exploded in the air. When the plane hit the ground, another explosion occurred.

The Tu-134 passengers jet owned by Russian airline UTAir, carrying 50 passengers and seven crewmembers, was commuting from the Siberian city of Surgut to the western city of Belgorod with a stop in Samara, a city on the Volga River, about 885 kilometres southeast of Moscow. Weather conditions were very poor at Samara as the twin-engine plane approached the airport: horizontal visibility was 150 meters and vertical visibility was 300 feet. Heavy and freezing fog had surrounded the area. The airplane contacted the ground 400 m short of the runway. The left wing hit the ground and separated from the fuselage. Then the plane rolled on its back and the fuselage broke apart. 6 passengers died, 20 occupants were injured and 31 escaped without injury. Prosecutors investigating the crash in the central Russian city of Samara said bad weather and pilot error were the most likely causes. After the crash, the plane's wrecked fuselage lay on thick snow yards from the landing strip. It took several minutes to the rescuers to reach the crash scene. The plane’s wings, tail and engine were scattered about as rescuers worked to evacuate surviving victims and bodies of the dead and police searched for clues.

The Garuda airlines Boeing 737-400 was on a passenger flight from Jakarta, Indonesia, to the Java island’s city of Yogyakarta, Indonesia, with 140 passengers and crew members onboard. It overshot the runway of Yogyakarta airport and caught fire killing 23 people and injuring at least 90. The Indonesian Boeing 737-400 started shaking violently before landing at the Yogyakarta international airport, landed intact but then overshot the runway, hitting fences and stopping in a rice field. Some survivors said the fire began at the front the plane before engulfing the aircraft. Many occupants managed to escape the blazing plane. The aircraft landing speed may have been a factor in the crash. The plane landed intact but was not able to stop before the end of the 7215-feet runway that may point to excess speed being a factor. Failure or malfunction of the aircraft braking systems could also be a cause of the accident: the failure of one of the three braking system (wheel brake, spoilers or thrust reversers) significantly increases the landing distance. The plane could also have touch down too far from the runway threshold, hence reducing the landing distance available. The pilot says he felt a very powerful downdraft just before landing. Such wind shears have been blamed in other accidents involving commercial jetliners: the aircraft become slightly unstable and may start to shudder or shake. The plane may finally be pushed to the ground very rapidly. A standard way to restore control of the plane is to speed up and pitch up. During the landing phase, it must end up in a safe go-around. If the go-around is not performed, the plane could land too fast.

The Fokker 100 belonging to Regional Airlines, a subsidiary of the carrier Air France, was on a passenger flight between Pau (France) and Paris (France) with 50 passengers and 4 crewmembers onboard. It crashed while attempting to take-off from Pau airport in south-western France. Just after lift-off, the twin-engine plane started to lose thrust. The captain declared a failure of the right engine to the Air Traffic Controller. At the same time, the aircraft rolled on its left. The Fokker was not able to gain altitude and the crew elected to perform an emergency landing in a field on the runway axis. The plane struck the fence surrounding the airport, and hit a public works lorry travelling on a road around the airport. The driver died in the accident. The landing gear tore off and the plane fell into a corn field. It skidded several hundred metres before coming to a halt. Passengers were quickly evacuated. Although shaken and shocked, none of the plane's passengers and crew was injured in the mishap, but the aircraft has been severely damaged. The probable cause of the crash is a wing or engine icing. The temperature recorded at the time of the accident was 0°C, with a dew point at -1°C and high humidity. These weather conditions ease the formation of ice on airplanes, which drastically decrease performances and may result in a crash. Witnesses say that during its 40 minutes stop at Pau airport, the plane did not proceed to the standard de-icing procedure. This procedure consists of washing wings and engine inlet with a hot glycol-based liquid before take-off, thus removing all ice accumulation. Details about aircraft icing This kind of severe icing can occur when aircraft fly into particular weather conditions (for example, in a cloud of supercooled water droplets). Ice accretion on the wing leading edge may occur. Airflow disruption will reduce the maximum lift coefficient attainable by as much as 30% – 50%, thus raising the stalling speed considerably. And because the aircraft has to fly at a greater angle of attack to maintain lift, the induced drag also increases and the aircraft continues to lose airspeed, making it impossible to sustain altitude if the stall is to be avoided. The weight of the ice is also particularly constraining. Air data probes may also iced, which leads to misleading airspeed indications. Finally, the engine air intake may also be impacted by icing, leading to a loss of power and a possible engine overheating. An aircraft is usually designed to prevent and overcome the icing phenomenon in flight. But on ground, the de-icing procedure consisting of washing the plane with a hot glycol-based liquid shall be performed just before take-off.

The Antonov belonging to Aeriantur-M Airlines was chartered to fly Turkish construction workers to Iraq. The plane left Adana, Turkey, for a 90-minute flight to the Balad Air Base, a US base in Iraq 80 km (50 NM) north of the capital Baghdad. There were 30 passengers and 5 crewmembers onboard. On final approach, pilots missed the approach due to heavy fog and decided to perform a go around. On the second attempt, the 25-year-old plane hit the ground 2,5 km short of runway and was destroyed. The death toll from the crash had risen to 34. Only one passenger survived and suffered injuries. Turkish officials have blamed bad weather and low visibility for the disaster, but an Iraqi government official on Wednesday cited technical failure or human error as the possible cause. Investigators do not exclude terrorism: in statements published on their web site, the Islamic Army in Iraq (IAI) claimed that they shot down.

The Adam Air Boeing 737-400 plane flying between Indonesian islands with 96 passengers and six crew on board lost contact with the Air Traffic Controller while cruising at 35 000 ft (10 700 m). The plane was flying from Surabaya on Java Island to Manado on Sulawesi Island flying in poor weather conditions when it vanished 83 nautical miles northwest of Makassar, an hour away from its destination. The plane did not report any complaints about the navigation, the condition of the plane or other technical problems. After the Boeing disappeared, two signals from its emergency beacon - which is activated on impact - were picked up by a plane in the vicinity and a satellite. Part of a jetliner's tail, food trays and shards of fuselage were pulled from the sea in northeastern Indonesia, more than 10 days after the plane vanished. It is clear that the plane crashed somewhere in the ocean. Adam Air, a privately owned low-cost Indonesian airline, began operations in Indonesia several years ago and most of its flights are domestic.