By BALZ BRUPPACHER

BERN, Switzerland (January 13, 2000 7:25 p.m. EST http://www.nandotimes.com) - A twin-engine plane carrying employees of a Libyan oil company to a refinery crashed in the Mediterranean Sea on Thursday with 41 people aboard. Reports of fatalities were unconfirmed.

Eighteen of the people on board the Swiss plane were rescued, according to state-run Libyan television, monitored in Cairo, and search and rescue efforts were continuing.

"The plane hit the water just off the Libyan coast and sank," said Hugo Schittenhelm of the Swiss Transportation Ministry. "A search for survivors and for the aircraft is under way. Nothing can yet be said about the exact number of victims."

All 38 passengers on board were employees of a Libyan oil company, said Franz Fassbind, chairman of Avisto AG air services company, which is based near Zurich and owns the plane. There were also three crew members, he said.

Schittenhelm earlier said the ministry had unconfirmed reports that 15 people were killed. Fassbind told a Zurich television station that he had information there were up to 15 dead, but did not elaborate.

Seventeen people on board were Libyans and the others were foreigners, the Libyan television report said. It did not give their nationalities, but Fassbind told a Zurich television they were citizens of four different countries.

The British Foreign Office later confirmed that 13 Britons were aboard the plane, but officials did not know if any had died.

The plane was headed east from Tripoli to an oil refinery at Marsa el-Brega, halfway along Libya's Mediterranean Coast, when it ran into trouble Thursday afternoon. About six miles before the airport, the pilot reported that both engines had stopped working and he was going to try to make an emergency landing on the water.

Aviation officials from Libya and Switzerland are investigating. The Swiss investigator is flying from Canada, where he has been working on the probe into the 1998 crash of a Swissair plane off the Canadian coast in which 229 people died, the ministry said.

Fassbind said his company has been working in Libya for the past 15 years and had never had an accident before. The pilots were trained in Switzerland and were very experienced, he added.

It was the second air crash involving a Swiss-owned plane this week. Crash investigators had closed their office to work on the site of the first crash, in which 10 people died when their Crossair Saab 340 came down shortly after takeoff from Zurich airport.

http://www.nandotimes.com/noframes/story/0,2107,500154097-500189782-500807167-0,00.html

-- Hokie (Hokie_@hotmail.com), January 14, 2000

Answers

Can anyone tell me what this has to do with y2k? There is so little happening that people are posting irrelevant items such as this. I bet a lot of you morons would be happy if it was shown that this plane crashed due to a y2k problem, but that wont be the case.

-- Mr. Sane (hhh@home.com), January 14, 2000.

Both engines out could mean fuel contamination.

-- Earl (earl.shuholm@worldnet.att.net), January 14, 2000.

Thank you Earl.

-- Hokie (Hokie_@hotmail.com), January 14, 2000.

Hokie, thanks for the report. It will be marked as pilot error. Mr Sane, doesn't matter to me if it was y2k related or not, If those two big fans stop blowing, you are going to sweat.

-- Bill (sticky@2sides.tape), January 14, 2000.