Pilot sent SOS minutes before crash
Region / Sudan
Gulfnews.com
04/02/2005
By Bassam Za’za’, Bassma Al Jandaly and Jay Hilotin,
Staff Reporters
SHARJAH: The captain of a Sudanese cargo plane that crashed near
Khartoum yesterday reported an emergency a few minutes before it went
off the radar screens, an official said.
“He (the pilot) said there was something wrong with the fuel system
… A few minutes later it disappeared from the screens,” Sudanese
Civil Aviation Authority director Abu Bakr Jaafar said.
“Of course, it is too early to tell what the cause is,” he said.
Nine people died when the cargo plane carrying goods from Sharjah
crashed.
The pilot appeared to have guided his aircraft away from a residential
district and crashed in an uninhabited area near the airport, Al Obaid
Ahmad Murawih, the media attaché at the Sudanese Consulate in Dubai,
told Gulf News.
“It crashed in a vacant lot where authorities are planning to build
the new Khartoum International Airport, east of the Nile River at
about 9am UAE time (8am in Sudan). The plane took off from Sharjah at
about 4.37am on Thursday.”
The aircraft, a Russian-made Ilyushin 76, was carrying a cargo
consignment from Sharjah to the Sudan-ese city of Nyala, near Darfur,
and was scheduled to land in Khartoum for refuelling, he said.
Murawih said a Sudanese businessman chartered the plane and that nine
people five Russians, three Sudanese and an Armenian, died in the
crash.
“There were seven crew members and we have no further information
about the other two,” he said.
Dr Ganem Al Hajiri, director general of Sharjah Civil Aviation
Authority, told Gulf News the aircraft was a chartered plane of Air
West (Al Ghareb), a private Sudanese company with offices in Sharjah.
“The plane is not registered in the UAE and neither are the crew
members,” he said.
Air West’s office in Sharjah declined to comment.
With inputs from agencies