'No word on survivors' after Kenya Airways plane goes down
A British journalist is believed to be among 114 people on board a Kenya Airways flight which crashed today in Cameroon.
The Nairobi-bound jet went down near the town of Lolodorf, about 155 miles south of the coastal city of Douala, where it had taken off shortly after midnight last night, said Alex Bayeck, a regional communications officer.
There was no word on survivors, said Bayeck, speaking by telephone en route to the crash site.
Kenya’s transport minister said it was too early to determine the cause of the crash.
Kenya Airways CEO Titus Naikuni, speaking in Nairobi earlier today, said the airline had not yet been officially informed that the plane had crashed, only that it was missing.
“The last message was received in Douala after takeoff and thereafter the tower was unable to contact the plane,” he said.
The Boeing 737-800 was carrying 114 people, including 105 passengers, from 23 countries, Kenyan airline officials said.
It is feared that Anthony Mitchell, a British correspondent in Nairobi with the Associated Press news agency, may be among the casualties of the crash.
Mr Mitchell was expelled from Ethiopia in January 2006 after being accused of portraying the country in a bad light with his reporting.
Dozens of family members waiting at Nairobi’s airport cried and collapsed in the airport terminal as news reports of the crash filtered in.
One person at the airport said families there had not been given any information. “I cannot talk now because there is no news,” he said, declining to give his name. “We have not been given any information.”
Cameroon’s military dispatched helicopters from the Douala airport to the crash site, an airport worker said. The first group of helicopters left early in the morning, she said. Military officials could not immediately be reached for comment.
Kenyan Transport Minister Ali Chirau Makwere said it was too early to know what had happened to the plane.
“We need to get information from the technical experts as to whether it was occasioned by the weather or pilot error or mechanical fault,” he said in Nairobi. “We really don’t know. It’s too early to make any conclusions.”
He also said Kenya was asking the US to help provide satellite communications to establish the state of Flight 507.
The flight departed Douala at 12.05am and was to arrive in Nairobi at 6.15am. The flight originated in Ivory Coast but stopped in Cameroon to pick up more passengers, the airline said.
The plane lost contact with airport controllers soon after take-off, and early state radio reports said it crashed near the southern coastal town of Niete. But later information suggested the crash was further inland, close to the town of Lolodorf, Bayeck said.
The Douala-Nairobi flight runs several times a week, and commonly is used as an intermediary flight to Europe and the Middle East.
Kenya Airways – considered one of the safest airlines in Africa – said most passengers were planning to transfer to ongoing flights in Nairobi. Naikuni said the plane was only six months old.
The last crash of an international Kenya Airways flight was on January 30, 2000, when Flight 431 was taking off from Abidjan, Ivory Coast, on its way to Nairobi. Investigators blamed a faulty alarm and pilot error for that crash, which killed 169 people.
