Negative Blogs

Two Russian pilots were abducted on Sunday in the city of Nyala in Sudan’s South Darfur province, the country’s SUNA news agency reported on Monday.

Both pilots were employees of the Khartoum-based Badr Airlines, the agency said without giving further details. The airliner provides cargo and passenger air services for various international aid programs.

The civil war that broke out in the western region of Darfur in early 2003 has claimed the lives of more than 300,000, according to United Nations estimates, and forced 2.7 million people from their homes. Sudan puts the number of dead at 10,000.

Abductions of foreigners, including aid workers and peacekeepers, have been on the rise in the war-torn region in the past months. In most cases, foreign nationals are being abducted for ransom.

In the most recent similar incident, a Mi-8 helicopter of the Russian aviation company UTAir was seized by an armed tribal group in late July. The helicopter, with a crew of four Russians, later returned to its base in Nyala.

Darfur Independence Front/Darfur Independence Army (DIF/DIA) militants

Tuesday night’s deadly China plane crash highlights the risks in China’s booming air travel industry. A disproportionate number of flights now have to take off and land at night without proper lighting.

The China plane crash that killed 42 people late Tuesday night was a rare blot on the country’s aviation safety copybook, say experts here. But it highlights the risks of flying in and out of some small regional airports at night, something more airlines are forced to do to meet the demands of China’s booming travel industry.

A domestic Henan Airways passenger jet crashed and burst into flames at a fog-shrouded provincial airport near Yichun in Northeastern China, killing 42 and injuring 54, according to official reports.

It is still not known what caused the accident “but from news reports I deduce that the reason is human error,” says Wang Yanan, deputy editor of Aerospace Knowledge magazine. “I think it came down too fast or too steeply.”

It emerged Wednesday that another airline, China Southern, decided last August to avoid night flights into Yichun. A technical note on the airline’s website said that “in principle there should be no night flights at Yichun airport,” citing worries about landing strip lighting, weather conditions, and the surrounding hilly terrain.

The newly built airport, one of a number of such regional facilities springing up all over the country to serve China’s booming travel industry, sits in a forested valley. China will have 244 airports by 2020, up from about 175 today, according to figures from the Civil Aviation Administration of China (CAAC.)

“Over the last few years, because of the high demand and big market, regional aviation has developed very fast,” says Mr. Wang. “The quality of personnel and facilities may not be keeping up.”

Tuesday’s crash, however, was the first major commercial airline accident in China for nearly six years, Wang points out. “I think it is an isolated case,” he adds. “In general aviation safety in China is normal.”

The government credits this to a nationwide crackdown on safety that it ordered in 2004, upgrading aircraft and airports, after 10 serious airplane crashes in four years had given China a notoriously dangerous reputation.

But at new airports a disproportionate number of flights take off and land at night, because airlines serving them can no longer get daytime slots at the busy hubs they fly to and from.

“At night in Northern China it is often cold and wet, so it may be foggy,” Wang points out, suggesting that Yichun airport’s landing lights may have been too weak to see properly in Tuesday night’s fog. “Small airports should install the right sort of equipment to cope with different conditions,” he adds.

The China plane crash that killed 42 people late Tuesday night was a rare blot on the country’s aviation safety copybook, say experts here. But it highlights the risks of flying in and out of some small regional airports at night, something more airlines are forced to do to meet the demands of China’s booming travel industry.

A domestic Henan Airways passenger jet crashed and burst into flames at a fog-shrouded provincial airport near Yichun in Northeastern China, killing 42 and injuring 54, according to official reports.

It is still not known what caused the accident “but from news reports I deduce that the reason is human error,” says Wang Yanan, deputy editor of Aerospace Knowledge magazine. “I think it came down too fast or too steeply.”

It emerged Wednesday that another airline, China Southern, decided last August to avoid night flights into Yichun. A technical note on the airline’s website said that “in principle there should be no night flights at Yichun airport,” citing worries about landing strip lighting, weather conditions, and the surrounding hilly terrain.

The newly built airport, one of a number of such regional facilities springing up all over the country to serve China’s booming travel industry, sits in a forested valley. China will have 244 airports by 2020, up from about 175 today, according to figures from the Civil Aviation Administration of China (CAAC.)

“Over the last few years, because of the high demand and big market, regional aviation has developed very fast,” says Mr. Wang. “The quality of personnel and facilities may not be keeping up.”

Tuesday’s crash, however, was the first major commercial airline accident in China for nearly six years, Wang points out. “I think it is an isolated case,” he adds. “In general aviation safety in China is normal.”

The government credits this to a nationwide crackdown on safety that it ordered in 2004, upgrading aircraft and airports, after 10 serious airplane crashes in four years had given China a notoriously dangerous reputation.

But at new airports a disproportionate number of flights take off and land at night, because airlines serving them can no longer get daytime slots at the busy hubs they fly to and from.

“At night in Northern China it is often cold and wet, so it may be foggy,” Wang points out, suggesting that Yichun airport’s landing lights may have been too weak to see properly in Tuesday night’s fog. “Small airports should install the right sort of equipment to cope with different conditions,” he adds.

By Peter Ford

Chinese paramilitary policemen stand guard near the damaged Henan Airlines plane which has crashed on landing in Yichun in northeast China's Heilongjiang province Wednesday.

The plane went down about 100 miles from the border in what analysts say may have been a defection attempt.

A North Korean military aircraft crashed into a cornfield in northeastern China about 100 miles from the border in what analysts believe was a failed defection attempt, the Chinese government said Wednesday.

The pilot was killed in the crash Tuesday, according to China’s official Xinhua news service, which also reported that the government “is in communication on the matter with the North Korean side.”

Chinese authorities released little information about the crash which took place in Fushun prefecture, Liaoning province. But photographs reportedly taken by villagers were widely distributed on Chinese blog sites showing the wreckage with a red star in a blue circle, the insignia of the North Korean air force. North Korea’s first air division’s 24th regiment is headquartered in Uiju, just north of the border city of Sinuiju, and pilots frequently train near the Yalu River which forms the border with China.

The aircraft was identified as a Russian-made MiG fighter, most likely a MiG-21, although early reports had described it as a helicopter.

South Korean analysts said they believed the pilot was attempting to escape his impoverished homeland, possibly heading toward Russia, which is more hospitable to defectors than China. Along the way, he might have run out of fuel and attempted an emergency landing in the fields.

“This couldn’t be a training accident — the border is clearly marked,” said Kim Chul-woo of the Korea Institute for Defense Analyses. “An attempted defection is the only plausible explanation.”

A respected military analyst in Seoul said that South Korean intelligence is still trying to determine what happened.

“I’m skeptical of what the Chinese government is saying,” said the analyst, who asked not to be quoted by name. The analyst said he believed the plane might have carried one or more passengers besides the pilot and might not have crashed accidentally.

Among the theories in circulation is that the pilot was heading toward a nearby airport in Shenyang and ran out of fuel. The plane was reported not to have sustained serious damage, making it conceivable that a passenger escaped.

Defections have increased in 2010 amid growing food scarcities in isolated North Korea, with most people escaping by foot across the border into China. However, there have been several famous incidents, one in 1983 and another in 1996, in which North Korean air force captains flew their planes across the demilitarized zone into South Korea.

By Barbara Demick

In northeastern China, people look over the wreckage of a North Korean military aircraft. (Yonhap / AFP/Getty Images / August 18, 2010)

One passenger was killed when an airplane crashed in bad weather and split into two when landing early Monday on the island of San Andres, Colombia, officials said.

The number of injured remained unclear Monday morning, but the national police said six of at least 127 people aboard the plane were not hurt.

There also were conflicting reports as to how many people were aboard the Aires airline 737-700 jet when it crashed around 1:49 a.m. (2:49 a.m. ET). The Colombian national police initially said the flight had 131 people — 121 adult passengers, four minors and six crew members. A list the police later released, however, indicated 127 people on board — 121 passengers and six crew members.

The passenger list included six Americans, five French, four Brazilians, four Costa Ricans and two Germans, said Col. Hector Carrascal, director of navigation services at the Colombian Civil Aviation Authority.

Police identified the woman who was killed as Amar Fernandez de Barreto. The passenger manifest, which goes by last name first, lists a Barreto Fernandez Paola Andrea.

There also was conflicting information about what caused the crash. The initial report from the national police said a downdraft may have shaken the airplane as it prepared to land. But Pedro Gallardo, governor of San Andres y Providencia state, told CNN en Español that lightning hit the plane. The pilot also reported a lightning strike, El Tiempo newspaper said.

A storm was reported in the area but not at the airport, Carrascal said.
The accident occurred about 260 feet (80 meters) before the start of the runway, Carrascal said. Wreckage was spread about another 328 feet (100 meters) on the runway, officials said.

Photos of the airplane on the runway show it split in two, with the nose and first eight rows of seat pointing in one direction and the rest of the aircraft almost pointing in the opposite direction.

The flight had taken off from Bogota, Colombia’s capital, shortly after midnight, police said.

By the CNN

The Aires airline 737-700 jet lies in pieces after crashing early Monday on the Colombian island of San Andres.

Seventy Dutch passengers were among the 103 people killed in the Libya plane crash in which an 8-year-old boy was the sole survivor, the Dutch Foreign Ministry said Thursday.

Officials had previously said 58 Dutch passengers died in the accident Wednesday.

Afriqiyah Airways confirmed on its Web site late Wednesday that the other 92 passengers and 11 crew members were killed when the plane crashed while trying to land at the Tripoli International Airport.

The child, identified as Ruben van Assouw, suffered multiple fractures in his lower limbs and underwent an operation at Al Khadra Hospital in Tripoli, a doctor at the hospital said.

He lost blood but is now much better, said the doctor, who declined to give her name.

The boy has seen a Dutch Embassy representative and is sedated and asleep, she said, adding that he will undergo multiple scans Thursday.

The Dutch Foreign Ministry, which had a representative at the hospital waiting to identify the boy, declined to confirm the child’s name.

The Afriqiyah Airways plane originated in Johannesburg, South Africa. As well as the 70 Dutch citizens killed, six South Africans died along with two Libyans, two Austrians, one German, one French, one Zimbabwean and two Britons.

Other passengers’ nationalities could not immediately be identified. The 11 crew members were all Libyan.

The plane, an Airbus A330-200, was at the end of its nearly nine-hour flight when it crashed at 6 a.m.

“We express our sincere regret and sadness on behalf of the airline. As well, we would like to express our condolences to the relatives and friends of those who had passengers on Flight 8U771 destined for Tripoli late last night, due to arrive around 6 o’clock this morning,” said Nicky Knapp, a representative of the Airports Company South Africa. She was speaking on behalf of Afriqiyah Airways.

Jerzy Buzek, president of the European Parliament, said the child’s survival, “given this tragic event, is truly a miracle.”

At the crash site, workers with surgical masks combed through the smoldering wreckage, which spilled over a large area. A wheel lay atop a pile of bags. Two green airline seats sat upright and intact amid burned parts of the aircraft.

Officials recovered the plane’s flight data recorder, which investigators use to piece together a flight’s last minutes.

The Tripoli-based Afriqiyah (Arabic for “African”) operates flights to four continents. The planes in the fleet carry the logo 9.9.99: the date when the African Union was formed.

The plane that crashed was one of three Airbus 330-200s that the airline owns.

By the CNN

A Dutch boy is the sole survivor of a plane crash in Libya that killed more than 100 people. The plane crashed short of the runway at Tripoli airport en route to London's Gatwick airport.

  Three US soldiers and one civilian employee were killed when a US helicopter crashed in southern Afghanistan.

 A Taliban spokesperson claimed responsibility for shooting down the Osprey helicopter.But Isaf said an ongoing investigation had not yet determined the cause of the crash.The helicopter, a CV-22 Osprey, crashed approximately 11km west of Qalat city in Zabul province late on Thursday night, the US-led International Security Assistance Force (Isaf) said in a statement on Friday.

Al Jazeera’s James Bays, reporting from Kabul, said: “The Osprey is an aircraft that is seen very often in Afghanistan.”

“The military like this aircraft because it has the speed of a plane and the agility of a helicopter.”

The CV-22 conducts long-range infiltration and resupply missions for US Forces. It employs tilt-rotor technology that allows it to take off and land as a helicopter. While in the air, the engines can roll forward, allowing the aircraft to fly faster than a standard helicopter.

“This aircraft was equipped with extra fuel tanks as it was on a special mission,” Bays said.

Previous crashes

Technical problems were blamed for a similar Nato helicopter crash in Zabul, which injured 14 people, on March 29.

This crash raises the number of foreign troops who have died during the war in Afghanistan this year to 151.

Last month, a helicopter carrying Turkish soldiers crash landed in Wardak.

Meanwhile, three Taliban fighters were killed and two injured by US troops in the northern Afghan province of Kunduz, Mohammad Omar, governor of the province, said on Friday.

Taliban commander Mullah Gai was among those killed, Omar said.

Two other fighters were killed and three Afghan policemen were injured during a clash in the neighbouring province of Takhar on Thursday, provincial police chief Sher Ahmad said.

Several other passengers were injured in the crash and transported to a nearby military base for medical treatment.

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The V-22 Osprey is popular with US troops because it takes off like a helicopter but flies like a plane [AFP

Jakarta, Indonesia (CNN) — A passenger plane crashed into a shallow waterway and broke in two after overshooting the runway in a remote area of Indonesia’s eastern Papua province on Tuesday, injuring 78 people on board.

Bambang Ervan, a spokesman for Indonesia’s Transportation Ministry, said investigators to the airport in the coastal town of Manokwari where the Merpati Nusantara Airlines Boeing 737-300 had been attempting to land.

There were reports that bad weather may have been a factor.

The injured, many of whom suffered fractures, were taken to hospitals in the area. In all, the plane was carrying 103 passengers, including three children and three infants.

Ervan said the aircraft bounced on the runway during landing, skidded and plunged into a nearby canal.

Merpati, a cash-strapped state-owned airline which is in the process of upgrading its aging fleet, flies many of the more remote routes across Indonesia.

Last year Merpati suffered two plane crashes in Papua. In July, a Merpati flight lost its front wheels as it took of from the town of Biak. A month later, another flight — a Twin Otter aircraft — crashed, killing 16 people on board.

Air accidents are not infrequent in Papua, a mountainous area in the easternmost part of Indonesia. Two cargo planes and several smaller aircraft also crashed in the province last year.

Indonesia has made efforts in recent years to improve its safety record. Last year the European Union’s Safety Commission lifted a ban on four Indonesian carriers.

In Hong Kong, Tuesday, a Cathy Pacific flight from Surabaya in Indonesia made an emergency landing injuring eight people.

Flight 780 from Surabaya, Indonesia, was carrying 309 passengers and 13 crew members, Cathay Pacific CEO Tony Tyler said at a news conference.

Passengers and crew deplaned through the Airbus 330’s evacuation slides. The injured were taken to the territory’s Princess Margaret Hospital.

Tyler said a full investigation will follow but engine trouble may have played a part in the incident.

The north runway at the Hong Kong International Airport was closed for almost three hours after the emergency landing.

Soldiers and police examine a Merpati Airline 737 after it skidded off the runway on landing in Manokwari, Indonesia, Tuesday.

Plane goes down in Russia en route to commemoration of Stalin’s victims.

President Lech Kaczynski and his wife Maria.

SMOLENSK, Russia - Polish President Lech Kaczynski and some of the country’s highest military and civilian leaders died on Saturday when the presidential plane crashed as it came in for a landing in thick fog in western Russia, killing 97, officials said.

Russian and Polish officials said there were no survivors on the 26-year-old Tupolev, which was taking the president, his wife and staff to events marking the 70th anniversary of the massacre in Katyn forest of thousands of Polish officers by Soviet secret police.

The crash devastated the upper echelons of Poland’s political and military establishments. On board were the army chief of staff, national bank president, deputy foreign minister, army chaplain, head of the National Security Office, deputy parliament speaker, civil rights commissioner and at least two presidential aides and three lawmakers, the Polish foreign ministry said.

Although initial signs pointed to an accident with no indication of foul play, the death of a Polish president and much of the Polish state and defense establishment in Russia en route to commemorating one of the saddest events in Poland’s long, complicated history with Russia, was laden with tragic irony.

Reflecting the grave sensibilities of the crash to relations between the two countries, Russian Prime Minister Vladimir Putin personally assumed charge of the investigation. He was due in Smolensk later Saturday, where he would meet Polish Prime Minister Donald Tusk, who was flying in from Warsaw.

“This is unbelievable — this tragic, cursed Katyn,” Kaczynski’s predecessor, Aleksander Kwasniewski, said on TVN24 television.

It is “a cursed place, horrible symbolism,” he said. “It’s hard to believe. You get chills down your spine.”

Pilot ignored instructions
Andrei Yevseyenkov, spokesman for the Smolensk regional government, said Russian dispatchers asked the crew to divert from the military airport in North Smolensk and land instead in Minsk, the capital of neighboring Belarus, or in Moscow because of the fog.

While traffic controllers generally have the final word in whether it is safe for a plane to land, they can and do leave it to the pilots’ discretion.

Air Force Gen. Alexander Alyoshin confirmed that the pilot disregarded instructions to fly to another airfield.

“But they continued landing, and it ended, unfortunately, with a tragedy,” the Interfax news agency quoted Alyoshin as saying. He added that the pilot makes the final decision about whether to land.

Russia’s Emergency Minister Sergei Shoigu said there were 97 dead. His ministry said 88 of whom were part of the Polish state delegation. Poland’s Foreign Ministry spokesman, Piotr Paszkowski, said there were 89 people on the passenger list but one person had not shown up for the roughly 1 1/2-hour flight from Warsaw’s main airport.

Some of the people on board were relatives of those slain in the Katyn massacre. Also among the victims was Anna Walentynowicz, whose firing in August 1980 from the Lenin Shipyards in Gdansk sparked a workers’ strike that spurred the eventual creation of the Solidarity freedom movement. She went on to be a prominent member.

“This is a great tragedy, a great shock to us all,” former president and Solidarity leader Lech Walesa said.

U.S. President Barack Obama said the loss “is devastating to Poland, to the United States, and to the world.”

In a statement, Obama said: “President Kaczynski was a distinguished statesman who played a key role in the Solidarity movement, and he was widely admired in the United States as a leader dedicated to advancing freedom and human dignity. With him were many of Poland’s most distinguished civilian and military leaders who have helped to shape Poland’s inspiring democratic transformation. We join all the people of Poland in mourning their passing.”

The deaths were not expected to directly affect the functioning of Polish government: Poland’s president is commander in chief of its armed forces but the position’s domestic duties are chiefly symbolic. Most top government ministers were not aboard the plane.

Aging planes?
According to the Aviation Safety Network, there have been 66 crashes involving Tu-154s in the past four decades, including six in the past five years. The Russian carrier Aeroflot recently withdrew its Tu-154 fleet from service, largely because the planes do not meet international noise restrictions and use too much fuel.

The aircraft was the workhorse of East Bloc civil aviation in the 1970s and 1980s, and many of the crashes have been attributed to the chaos that ensued after the breakup of the Soviet Unio

Poland has long discussed replacing the planes that carry the country’s leaders but said they lacked the funds.

The presidential plane was fully overhauled in December, the general director of the Aviakor aviation maintenance plant in Samara, Russia told Rossiya-24. The plant repaired the plane’s three engines, retrofitted electronic and navigation equipment and updated the interior, Alexei Gusev said. He said there could be no doubts that the plane was flightworthy.

The plane tilted to the left before crashing, eyewitness Slawomir Sliwinski told state news channel Rossiya-24. He said there were two loud explosions when the aircraft hit the ground.

Rossiya-24 showed footage from the crash site, with pieces of the plane scattered widely amid leafless trees and small fires burning in woods shrouded with fog. A tail fin with the red and white national colors of Poland stuck up from the debris.

The U.S. government said on Sunday it would resume military evacuation flights to the United States for badly injured Haitian earthquake victims after a four-day suspension over cost and treatment questions.

The White House said the flights were expected to begin again within 12 hours. Medical workers in Haiti had said the suspension put seriously injured patients at risk.

“Having received assurances that additional capacity exists both here and among our international partners, we determined that we can resume these critical flights,” White House spokesman Tommy Vietor said in a statement.

In another headache for U.S. officials, 10 Americans face a court hearing in Port-au-Prince on Monday after their arrest on suspicion of trafficking children.

The five men and five women from an Idaho-based charity deny wrongdoing after they were arrested trying to take 33 children to the neighboring Dominican Republic without documents proving adoptions had taken place or that the children were orphaned by the quake.

On a more positive note, food distribution to quake survivors, which has been chaotic at times in recent weeks, went more smoothly on Sunday using a coupon system that targeted women as recipients of the rations.

Nearly three weeks after the magnitude 7.0 earthquake killed up to 200,000 Haitians and left up to 1 million more homeless, a huge U.S.-led international relief operation has been struggling to help injured and hungry survivors.

Hundreds of patients have already been evacuated to the United States for treatment, most to Florida hospitals. But Florida’s governor had asked the federal government to share the burden, triggering a halt in the Medevac flights.

The White House statement on Sunday said patients were being identified for transfer, doctors were making sure it was safe for them to fly and that pediatric care was being prepared aboard the aircraft where needed.

The state of Florida is identifying hospitals to receive the patients, Vietor added.

He said Haiti’s government had estimated there were more than 200,000 injuries from the January 12 quake.

CHILD TRAFFICKING FEARS

Haitian authorities have held the 10 Americans from the New Life Children’s Refuge group in custody in Port-au-Prince since their arrest late on Friday at the Malpasse border crossing with the Dominican Republic.

Haitian Prime Minister Jean-Max Bellerive said the Americans could face serious accusation.

“We did not arrest Americans, we arrested kidnappers,” Bellerive told Reuters. “We just hope that the people were acting in good faith and that they were doing what they were doing to try to help the children.”

Laura Silsby, a leader of the Idaho group, told CNN, “The truth ultimately is that we came here to help the children, and we know that God will reveal truth.” She earlier told Reuters the group had permission from the Dominican Republic to bring the children to an orphanage there.

The children have been taken to an orphanage in Haiti run by international aid group SOS Children’s Villages.

“All these children had no papers, no passports or anything and as the children came to us they were hungry, they were thirsty and the little baby was really dehydrated,” orphanage head George Willard said.

Bellerive told CNN in an interview broadcast on Sunday that he was worried about the risk of illegal adoptions and child trafficking. “We have already reports of a lot of trafficking (of children) and even of organ trafficking,” he said, while citing no specific cases.

A coupon-based system to feed the masses of homeless earthquake victims was expanded in Port-au-Prince on Sunday.

More than 200 U.S. troops fanned out around a sprawling refugee camp in the capital’s Champs de Mars plaza at dawn for the distribution of 1,650 bags of rice.

The rice was given only to women who had received numbered coupons from relief workers who had identified those most in need in the sprawling camp, said Jacques Montouroy of the Catholic Relief Services group running the distribution.

“You have to install discipline. … This is the only way for food to trickle down to everybody,” said Montouroy.

In recent weeks, some food handouts turned unruly and violent, with mobs of hungry, desperate quake survivors overwhelming aid workers and their U.N. peacekeeper escorts. Hard money training.

An American Airlines flight from Miami with more than 150 aboard overshot a runway while landing during a heavy rainstorm in Kingston on Tuesday night, injuring more than 40 people, officials said.

Flight 331 skidded across a road at Norman Manley International Airport and halted at the edge of the Caribbean Sea, apparently prevented from going into the water only by the upward slope of the sand. The nose of the jet was less than 10 feet from the water.

Some 44 passengers were taken to nearby hospitals with broken bones and back pains, Information Minister Daryl Vaz told The Associated Press. Four people were seriously injured, said Paul Hall, senior vice president of airport operations.

The plane’s fuselage was cracked, its right engine broke off from the impact and the left main landing gear collapsed, said Tim Smith, an American Airlines spokesman at the company’s headquarters in Fort Worth, Texas. Most of the injuries were cuts and bruises and none were life threatening, though he had no further details, he said.

Some passengers leaving the plane were seen with cuts on their faces or bloody lips. Some looked visibly shaken as they bustled out of the terminal wrapped in red blankets, while others ducked under umbrellas to escape the heavy downpour.

The Boeing 737-800, which originated at Reagan National Airport in Washington, D.C., had taken off from Miami International Airport at 8:52 p.m. and arrived in Kingston at 10:22 p.m. It was carrying 148 passengers and a crew of six, American said. The majority of those aboard were Jamaicans coming home for Christmas, Vaz said. Hard money training.